KARACHI: The Sindh High Court has restrained filmmaker Jamshed Mahmood, popularly known as Jami, from making any defamatory statement against Dawn Chief Executive Officer Hameed Haroon.

The single bench of the SHC headed by Justice Agha Faisal issued a notice to the defendant (Jami) for Feb 12 and ruled that, in the meanwhile, he was restrained from making any defamatory statement against the plaintiff.

Earlier, Mr Haroon through his lawyer filed a defamation suit in the SHC and submitted that the allegations levelled by Jami were baseless and unfounded, and sought a restraining order for the defendant.

The bench in its order said that the lawyer for plaintiff, Advocate Faisal Siddiqui, argued that the defendant undertook an insidious media campaign to allege that he was raped 13 years ago when he was presumably 34-year-old.

The lawyer maintained that it was prima facie apparent that no complaint in this regard was ever made to law enforcement agencies at the time or thereafter.

He further argued that protests were held against Mr Haroon and in support of Jami even when the latter did not directly blame the former for this alleged rape.

Mr Haroon also demanded damages of Rs1 billion from the defendant and the amount “to be disbursed to any charitable organisation or for any noble cause (including the freedom of the press) that the court deems appropriate and on such terms and conditions as the court determines”.

Last year in October, Jami came forward with an allegation that he was raped by a “media tycoon” 13 years ago and on Dec 28, he named the Dawn CEO as the alleged rapist.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2020