Famous Pakistani singer and model Meesha Shafi has approached the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Tuesday after petition was dismissed by the Lahore High Court.
The Lahore High Court dismissed her petition challenging the decisions of the Punjab governor and provincial ombudsperson. The petition includes Ali Zafar, the women ombudsperson, the Punjab governor as parties in the case. The singer has requested the Supreme Court to declare the decision of the High Court as null and void. Earlier this year, the Punjab ombudsperson for protection of harassment against women at the workplace dismissed Shafi’s sexual harassment claims against Ali Zafar. In July 2018, the provincial governor had upheld the ombudspersons decision citing no employee-employer relations between the two singers. The Lahore High Court reiterated this in it’s October 11th 2019 ruling. One of the Lahore High Court judges, Shahid Karim, remarked that there was no legal error in the decision of the ombudsperson to dismiss Meesha Shafi’s harassment claim. However, Shafi’s legal team believes otherwise saying that the Punjab governor’s dismissal was illegal. The complaint, filed in April 2018, was against singer Ali Zafar who she accused of sexual harassment on multiple occasions. Following this was an argument over the definition of the workplace in the Act aimed to safeguard women. The argument was that this definition was not limited to women working day jobs. The basis of the rejection of Shafi’s appeal by the LHC was that it was not presented at an appropriate forum. Prior to, this had been set aside by the Punjab governor and ombudsperson on technical grounds. The claim was that there were no employee-employer relations and as a result, this case does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010. In an unrelated event, a day prior to this Shafi appeared at court to record her statement in the defamation case filed against her by Ali Zafar amounting to Rs1 billion. Zafar claims that the sexual harassment allegations were made against him as a last resort and were not a part of any plan or larger scheme. In the statement, Shafi details how she never intended on going public with the allegations made against Zafar but felt as though she had no choice after it became known to her that she would have to work with him again in the future, despite explaining her reservations and the allegations to management. She further described that the matter made her embarrassed and shocked. Shafi claims that the first instance of harassment took place at the residence of Zafar’s father-in-law during a greeting between the two. During the hearing, Meesha Shafi also provided various WhatsApp messages to help her argument and claimed that she did not personally know any of the women who have made similar allegations against Ali Zafar following her public announcement. Speaking outside the court, she had told media that Zafar filed the defamation case to intimidate and pressurise her. In a statement later, she said: “I bore the losses and [was] defamed and, as a woman, I suffered great damage to my reputation, as well as financial loss. It was detrimental to my mental health too.” Keep up to date with more news at ProperGaanda: LUMS Professor mysteriously disappears following sexual harassment complaint