Singer Meesha Shafi gets relief from LHC against stay order of sessions court

Staff Reporter

19th Jan, 2022. 05:21 pm
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LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday granted a huge relief to singer Meesha Shafi and annulled the stay order issued by a sessions court in Rs2 billion defamation suit filed by her against fellow singer Ali Zafar.

A single-member bench of LHC comprising Justice Asim Hafeez delivered the verdict on Shafi’s petition and directed the sessions court to commence proceedings in her suit.

The row between both singers started in 2018 when Shafi accused Zafar of harassing her “on more than two occasions”. In response, the male singer had filed a defamation suit worth Rs1 billion, maintaining that such “baseless and unfounded” accusations had allegedly tarnished his reputation.

In September 2019, Shafi filed a Rs2 billion suit for damages in a sessions court against Zafar for levelling false allegations against her on media.

Zafar then filed a petition in the sessions court and demanded a stay order in Shafi’s case against him until his petition was decided. Additional Sessions Judge Amjad Ali had ruled that until Zafar’s defamation petition against Shafi was not concluded, a verdict would not be given.

In 2019, the sessions court had stayed the proceedings in the damages suit filed by the female singer, which she had challenged in the high court.

The petition filed by the female singer in the LHC said, “It is a settled principle of law that the court shall not proceed with the trial of any subsequent suit in which the matter in issue is also directly and substantially in issue in a previously instituted suit between the same parties under the same title and the previous suit is pending adjudication before the court of competent jurisdiction.”