LAHORE:
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)'s special court on Tuesday registered a First Information Report (FIR) against singer Meesha Shafi, model Iffat Omar and nine others on the accusations of running a social media campaign against singer Ali Zafar.
Other than Shafi and Omar, Lena Ghani, Fareeha Ayub, Mahim Javed, Ali Gul Pir, Haseem Zaman Khan, Hamna Raza and Syed Faizan Raza have been nominated in the FIR.
According to reports, FIA's cybercrime wing registered an FIR against the accused after a two-year investigation.
The agency had provided the accused with more than three opportunities to defend themselves, but they failed to do so and are liable for action.
According to the FIR registered on April 19, 2018, Shafi had accused Zafar of sexual harassment on Twitter. In November 2018 Zafar had protested against the social media campaign against him to the FIA Cyber Crime Wing and lodged a complaint
Zafar, in his application, argued that the allegations against him were made under a premeditated plan conspired by Shafi, her friend and her lawyer. Whereas, numerous fake [social media] accounts were also created to run the 'Me Too' campaign against him.
The singer also provided details of various Twitter and Facebook accounts to the FIA in support of his claims.
Zafar told the FIA that the most prominent of these fake accounts was NEHASAGOL1, which was created about 50 days before Shafi made accusations.
Through this account, obscene words and pictures were published against Ali Zafar and his family and more than 3000 tweets were sent against Ali Zafar in a year from this account.
Surprisingly, the first 6 followers of this account include Meesha Shafi's lawyer Nighat Dad, mother Saba Hameed, aunt Bashara Hameed, friend Lena Ghani and accused Haseem Zaman, Zafar stated in the application.
In addition, a number of fake accounts had been campaigning against Zafar on social media sites for a long time, with many of these accounts being abruptly terminated when Zafar tweeted about complaining to FIA about it.
According to the FIA, Mesha Shafi appeared before the FIA on December 3, but could not produce any witnesses or evidence to substantiate her allegations.
Artist Lena Ghani was also summoned but did not appear and sent a written statement which was not satisfactory.
On April 19, 2018, Ghani was found guilty of publishing defamatory material on Twitter against the complainant.
Fareeha Ayub and Mahim Javed were also summoned four times but did not join the investigation. Effat Omar appeared before the FIA but did not record her statement the FIA giving her him more time.
According to the FIR, Singer Ali Gul Pir used his Twitter account to post insulting remarks against Zafar.
He was also summoned three times but did not appear. He submitted his statement to FIA Karachi which was found to be unsatisfactory.
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