ISLAMABAD: Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) Director General Dr Fouzia Saeed on Monday filed a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) cybercrime wing seeking legal action against former Lok Virsa executive director Uxi Mufti and others for allegedly leading a propaganda campaign against her on social media.
Dr Saeed, who also served as Lok Virsa executive director for a three-year term starting in 2015, said one of her achievements as the head of Lok Virsa was the digitalisation of its audio and video archives, a process that Pakistan Television and Shalimar Recordings are still struggling with.
She said she sought assistance in this regard from the Smithsonian Institute, one of the world’s most credible cultural institutions, based in Washington D.C. The digitised archives were prepared and uploaded on a server, properly spliced and documented for searchable functions with three portals for researchers.
Dr Saeed claimed that Mr Mufti recently began to malign her because of a personal vendetta and knowing that digitised material is not a material artefact that can be stolen and is available where it should be, deliberately and maliciously churned out false, vitriolic and criminal allegations online and on the messaging platform WhatsApp by claiming that the archives had been stolen.
She alleged that he also wrote inflammatory, scandalous and defamatory emails to the Smithsonian Institute, maligning her reputation internationally and making false and criminal claims such as that she had received funds from the United States in return for selling them Lok Virsa’s archival material.
“The acts and omissions......prima facie, attract, inter alia, sections 11, 20, 21, and 24 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 and sections 34, 109, 500, 504 and other the relevant provisions of the PPC that entail criminal proceedings,” her complaint stated.
She said an independent, objective and transparent inquiry was conducted by the government following the fabricated claims that concluded once and for all that nothing was missing from the archives and all the digitised material was available on the server with its searchable functions still working.
It was also witnessed by experts from the administrative ministry and Lok Virsa’s new management, and a report was accordingly written to establish the facts.
Dr Saeed said Mr Mufti and his cohorts have continued to launch, manage, electronically disseminate and manipulate a campaign of malicious vituperation and vilification against her, motivated by a personal vendetta, recycling the same allegations by making fake complaints, statements in the media and online, sending out messages on social media and using hate speech to incite violence against her.
“By maliciously causing dissemination and circulation of the incorrect, false defamatory, libellous and actionable material, with reckless disregard to the veracity of the allegations and claims, have resulted in the complainant to suffer in her reputation and estimation among peers, friends and general public.
“In addition, their verbal and written insinuatory, inflammatory and defamatory imputations, the complainant has incurred irreparable damage and serious injury to her reputation, honour, interests, feelings and suffering mental agony and anguish,” the complaint said.
She said Mr Mufti and others had intentionally transmitted and publicly displayed allegations and insinuations knowing them to be false to harm her reputation, intimidate her for revenge and to cultivate hatred against her.
In response to Dr Saeed’s legal notice, Mr Mufti alleged that she brought in private personnel from an NGO to carry out the digitalisation under a grant programme and gave them free and unrestricted access to Lok Virsa studios, equipment, professional facilities and cultural archives.
He said Dr Saeed assumed the role of project director, adding: “In about one and half year’s time most of the professional video archive of Lok Virsa was transferred to 37 hard disks of 1 terabyte each and five hard disks of 4tb each.”
“This means in all 57tb of video material was digitalised and transferred to hard disks, the remaining about 6,300 video content were spliced and the spliced video clips were transferred to a computer server. But the original 57tb of hard disks were removed,” he claimed.
He said there were two formal inquiries into the alleged theft of the archives, but the Lok Virsa executive director explained it away by asserting that all the materials are with Lok Virsa, which is not the issue.
“The 57tb of hard disks are not with Lok Virsa, these were removed from the studio and carried away,” Mr Mufti insisted.
When contacted, Dr Saeed rejected Mr Mufti’s allegations and said they were baseless.
Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2020
