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Singer Meesha Shafi has won a defamation case against ARY’s UK broadcaster, New Vision TV (NVTV). The channel issued an on-air apology and agreed to settle the case out of court.

In its apology, NVTV admitted that its report had created a “misunderstanding” and stated: “We are sorry if our broadcast caused Meesha Shafi any distress.”

In 2023, a UK High Court found that the channel had defamed Shafi in a December 5, 2020 broadcast aired by ARY UK by asserting that Shafi was deliberately failing to comply with Pakistani court orders over the course of two years. The court also found that the channel depicted Shafi as “someone who does not comply with legal requirements laid down by a court and engages in such behaviour repeatedly”.

The broadcast, which was submitted to the court as evidence, said, “She [Shafi] came to Pakistan, did her work and left. Singer Meesha Shafi threw the court orders to the winds. She came to Pakistan, recorded a song and then returned to Canada. She did not present herself in court. Ali Zafar has filed a defamation lawsuit against Meesha.”

“Such an assertion would have the tendency of lowering the claimant [Shafi] in the estimation of right-thinking people generally; it is contrary to the common shared values of our society for people to deliberately ignore court orders requiring them to attend court, and to do so repeatedly over an extended period…The claimant is a very high-profile Pakistani celebrity who has taken a leading role in the advancement of women’s rights, holding herself out as an example to society. Given the claimant’s standing, the words complained of are likely to have a seriously adverse impact on the way the claimant is treated, thus satisfying the seriousness threshold,” noted the court.

Shafi accused singer and actor Ali Zafar of physical sexual harassment in 2018, in what was believed to be the first, and certainly most high profile case MeToo movement case in Pakistan. Following her accusation, Zafar filed a Rs1 billion defamation case against her, which she countered with a defamation suit of her own.

Shafi’s sexual harassment case, filed in the Lahore High Court, was dismissed in 2019 on the technical grounds that her allegations did not fall under the Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010.

In 2021, the Supreme Court agreed to hear her case to determine whether her allegations against Zafar fall under the 2010 law.