Dawn Images

A day after Images published a story showing a Patari staff member referencing Ali Zafar in a request to have Faris Shafi and Ali Sethi's latest track moved from its then-placement on the music streaming app, both Ali Zafar and Patari co-founder Faisal Sherjan have come forward with statements.

Read: Evidence emerges that Ali Zafar and Patari worked to undermine Faris Shafi's latest track

Yesterday Patari co-founder and co-owner Faisal Sherjan took to Facebook saying: "A group of ex-Patari employees have tried to run a campaign to damage the Patari brand. They are posing as a "righteous" lot with a conscience when the truth is quite otherwise. The latest was an attempt to leak internal communication seeking to distort the truth. The screenshot leaked to Dawn Images is reflective of an internal conversation between Patari employees and not a conversation between Ali Zafar’s team members or Ali Zafar and Patari as is being discussed. Nobody from Patari spoke to Ali Zafar, directly or indirectly for any kind of forced placement of his music for his film as suggested by the Dawn story."

Sherjan further states that the person who referred to Ali Zafar and Meesha Shafi in the screen shot is Patari co-founder Humayun Haroon. He goes on to say that any mention of Ali Zafar by Humayun was "inadvertent."

Sherjan says the only communication that Patari had with anyone related to Zafar was a discussion with an unnamed independent music publishing company who contacted Patari to discuss "fair positioning" of Teefa in Trouble's music on Patari, and that no request was made by the company to remove or move another artist's track.

A day prior to Sherjan's statement, in a conversation with Images, Patari's interim CEO Rabeel Warraich confirmed that Faisal Sherjan "does not represent or speak on behalf of the company."

When contacted again after Sherjan issued his statement, Warraich again said: "No other individual can speak [for Patari] in an official capacity other than me until a permanent CEO is hired."

However, a statement released by Ali Zafar's legal team to Images yesterday references Faisal Sherjan's statement.

The statement by Zafar's legal team reads: "Ali Zafar did not at any time speak to nor reach out to Patari, directly or indirectly for any kind of forced placement of his music for his film as suggested by the story above. This is an absolutely false and misleading narrative."

Zafar's statement reads: "This [Patari] employee has neither spoken to Ali, nor his communications team nor his management team all of whom represent Ali officially. The Patari employee had only been in communication with the independent music license company responsible for Teefa in Trouble’s music distribution in Pakistan."

Zafar's statement reiterates Sherjan's position, continuing: "The author shares in the article a ‘leaked’ screenshot of an INTERNAL employee to employee communication which seems to be happening in their internal server at Patari, where a gentleman whose name was kept anonymous, claiming to represent Ali Zafar’s views was communicating with another employee. This employee has neither spoken to Ali, nor his communications team nor his management team all of whom represent Ali officially. The Patari employee had only been in communication with the independent music license company responsible for Teefa in Trouble’s music distribution in Pakistan, who in their own right, like any distribution company, have all the right to ask for a fair positioning of content as they do with all the streaming websites they work with independently. However, fair placement is never at the cost of anyone else’s content being compromised. Patari ideally should have clarified this explicitly in their statement yesterday."

Images contacted Warraich for comment on the above; the interim CEO said: "A Patari employee misconstrued the communication with the third party to have come directly from Ali or representing his views."

Images reached out to the music distribution company referred to by Patari or Zafar's legal team; the distribution company, called Silent Roar Productions, confirmed that it does represent Teefa in Trouble's music in Pakistan.

Waqas Almas, who runs the company, says: "Neither myself nor anyone from my organisation ever asked Patari to remove any song or promote Teefa's songs... Instead, we just asked to promote Teefa's songs just like we asked other platforms too.

When asked who could have ordered Faris Shafi and Ali Sethi's song to be moved if the request didn't come from his own company, Almas replied: "The leaked screenshot is an internal communication of Patari employees. Again, the Faris/Ali Sethi song was never removed from the platform, it was available on the platform throughout the time. Again, Teefa's songs were removed from the platform so if anyone should be aggrieved it should be us for 1) our content not being promoted and 2) being falsely accused of trying to have the content pushed in place of another artist... the accusation is condemnable and false as proved by Patari themselves."

Patari has not responded to questions about why Patari team member Haroon sent a message referring to Ali Zafar and Meesha Shafi on Patari's communication channels. The origin of the request also remains unclear.

When asked why Ali Zafar was named in the conversation and who was responsible for making the original request, Patari interim CEO Warraich says: "There was no fault. There was a debate on the internal communication portal after which a decision was made to move the tile."