Meesha misused ‘MeToo’ against me, charges Ali Zafar

LAHORE: Famous singer, actor Ali Zafar Wednesday concluded his statement in a defamation suit filed by him against singer Meesha Shafi saying that Meesha had misused the ‘MeToo’ movement against him and the other girls who came forward after Meesha’s allegations are deeply interlinked.

Ali in his statement said that he was the target of a plan to launch the ‘Metoo’ movement in Pakistan alleging that one Nighat Dad who claims to be a cyber crime and harassment warrior, was involved in this crime herself.

Ali Zafar had started recording his statement Monday which concluded Wednesday. He said that “Meesha Shafi’s claim in her court testimony that the other women who came forward are unrelated was a complete lie. Our findings suggested that they were deeply interlinked much before the allegations. He said that the common link seemed to be Nighat Dad. They were all either working with or for her, Zafar added. He said that one such girl named Sofy on twitter had written that he (Ali) harassed her cousin backstage during a Shaukat Khanam fund-raiser in Washington DC. However, Naila Khan, the official representative of Shaukat Khanam, confronted her on twitter, saying that she was by my side the whole time and there was in fact no backstage at the venue in DC. Once her lie was caught, she deleted her tweet and we later found out that she was connected to Nighat Dad.

He pointed out that another girl Maham Javed saying that she also made an accusation related to her cousin. She has been actively working for Nighat Dad’s foundation for a number of years and moderated a conference for her NGO in Oct 2017.

Similarly a girl with the twitter user name Fay_Alif accused me on twitter of harassing more than five girls at my A levels institute. I never took A-levels. I did my FA from Government College University, Zafar said while presenting his certificates. Fay Alif and Nighat Dad can be seen regularly communicating on twitter prior to the accusation.

Ali Zafar kept on saying that a woman named Rameena posted on her facebook that she had received a phone call from an unknown number where the woman on the other side aggressively tried to persuade her to accuse me of harassment because she saw her standing in a photograph next to me. She was so shocked that she posted the entire account on her facebook wall.

Similarly many other women were unsuccessfully approached and coerced to build a false narrative against me, Zafar alleged. Ali said that he was the target of a plan to launch the ‘Metoo’ movement in Pakistan. All real and fake accounts have also been presented to the FIA for investigation, Ali added.