Rahat moves FIA against ex-manager

LAHORE: Music star Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has registered a criminal case against his former manager Salman Ahmed for blackmailing him and using his YouTube channel unauthorised.

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan made the complaint at Federal Investigation Agency’s Cyber Crime Circle in Lahore. The famous singer was accompanied by his lawyer Zain Qureshi and singer Waris Baig.

In his compliant to Pakistan’s main investigating agency, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan said, “In order to manage my professional work I hired Salman Ahmed, son of Shaikh Saleem Ahmed, as my manager along with various other professional duties regarding managing my work. Mr Ahmed is involved in blackmailing, defaming and threatening me. He has threatened me that he will destroy my career if I stopped working with him. He has also threatened me that he had got my videos which he intends to release to damage me and my family.”

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has been in dispute with Salman Ahmed for a few weeks now after Rahat announced he would be managed by a new team. Salman Ahmed’s PME (Portfolio Managing Events) World managed Rahat Fateh Ali Khan for 12 years before the fall out around two months ago. After the association was publicly ended, a video of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan surfaced in which he was shown beating one of his band members. Sources in Rahat’s new management have alleged that Salman Ahmed had made the secret video and released it to media to damage Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan says his former manager has illegally taken control of his channel which has around eight million followers. The complaint says, “I also assigned him a duty of creating a Youtube channel with the name of Ustad Rahet Fateh Ali Khan for uploading my latest songs and videos on it. The youtube channel was created in the year 2016 but later on in 2022 Salman Ahmad illegally and unlawfully changed the logins and name of the Youtube channel.

“The URL of the youtube channel is https://youtube.com/@TheFolkAndSoulStudio?si=KDAEFkJ1OQIDRSjI having 7.96 million subscribers. In this background having jealousy within the cultural circles people like Salman Ahmed having nefarious designs have been making consistent efforts to tarnish my image and to earn money by misusing my name by unauthorised use of identity information. Salman Ahmed being privy to all my commercial activities in the field of Qawwali and singing, very cleverly fabricated, committed criminal breach of trust and edited my Youtube account to get wrongful gain due to which I have suffered a lot of loss and have been defamed by his calculated campaign launched against me.

“The videos available on the Youtube channel are my work and they have been used by Salman Ahmad without my consent. He is illegally and unauthorizedly using, copying, uploading and transmitting my data and videos to earn money through Youtube. Salman Ahmad with the intent for wrongful gain has interfered and used the information system to deceive general public by impersonating me which has caused irreparable damage and harm to my reputation. Using my name and videos without my consent is clearly an act of blackmailing and cyber staking. He is giving impression to the general public that I am still running that Youtube channel. In fact he has got an unauthorised access to it which has caused me a lot of financial loss. The views on the videos on this Youtube channel are in billions and one of the videos has maximum views of 1.5 billion. My whole efforts related to my work and my biggest source of connecting with my audience have been illegally taken away by Salman Ahmed by committing various heinous cyber crimes. Instead of giving me back my Youtube channel after being terminated from the job he is still adamant on using my Youtube channel and my name in order to fulfil his nefarious designs.”

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has told the FIA that “Salman Ahmed is also involved in defaming and blackmailing me through videos he got published in media. He has threatened me that he will release more videos if I ever take a stand against his blackmailing. He is a resident in the UAE and his actions are in violations of laws of that country too. It is, therefore, requested that strict enquiry shall be initiated against Salman Ahmed and FIR shall be registered under section 3,4,13,14,16,20,24 of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act and 419,420.468,471,500 and 506 of Pakistan Penal Code.”

Salman Ahmed previously denied allegations by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and regretted that their relation of 12 years had ended badly.