The brawl between singer Meesha Shafi and Ali Zafar took a sharp turn for the worst when a female journalist, Hamna Zubair, admitted before the court that she was in contact with Meesha before publishing the story of allegations against Ali Zafar.
The ex-editor in chief was confronted in the proceeding of the defamation case filed by Ali Zafar for her involvement in sexual harassment allegations and using the platform of the media group Dawn.
Ali Zafar’s lawyer, Muhammad Umer Tariq Gill, took to his Twitter and said that the cross-examination with Hamna Zubair for using Dawn’s platform to launch a smear campaign against the male singer was completed.
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The lawyer posted a thread with the details about the vilification campaign against his client and the ones involved in it.
Thread: Today we completed our cross examination on @dawn_com @dawn_images ex-editor in chief @hamnazubair on how she used Dawn’s platform to launch a smear campaign against @AliZafarsays against all & Dawn’s own ethics of journalism. cc @abbasz55 @jhaque_ #jouranlism #ethics pic.twitter.com/KiYEA3WGgW
— Muhammad Umer Tariq Gill (@MuhammadUmerTa3) July 26, 2021
Hamna Zubair in her defense maintained that she never committed anything to Meesha Shafi and she only published the sorry against the male singer when it burst out in the public.
However, the journalist admitted that she contacted Ali for his version but didn’t wait for his response before publishing the article against him.
“It is correct that I posted the article five minutes after I contacted the plaintiff for his rebuttal. It is correct that in these five minutes the plaintiff (Zafar) had not responded”, she added.
Hamna also confessed that she had ties with Meesha Shafi’s lawyer Nighat Dad prior to the allegations and admitted she didn’t gauge before writing articles against Ali Zafar.
During the cross-examination, she said that it was correct that the plaintiff had filed a complaint against her in Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) but she never received any notice.