Dawn Images

Filmmaker Jamshed Mahmood Raza, popularly known as Jami, has been granted interim bail by the Sindh High Court days after being convicted of defamation and sentenced to two years in jail by a lower court.

Jami’s lawyer confirmed the development to Images on Thursday morning and that an appeal has been filed by the legal team. He has been directed to submit a Rs50,000 surety and PR bonds.

In the appeal, Jami’s lawyers argued that the trial court “wrongly shifted the burden of proof upon the appellant [Jami], contrary to settled principles of criminal law and natural justice, where the entire onus lay upon the prosecution to prove the alleged offence beyond reasonable doubt” and that the “evidence on record is unreliable and highly contradictory, and the prosecution has failed to establish the offence beyond reasonable doubt”.

It appealed to the court to suspend the sentence awarded by the trial court and, after hearing arguments, set aside the judgment.

The filmmaker was sentenced by a Karachi additional sessions court on Tuesday to two years in jail and a fine of Rs10,000 under Section 500 of the Pakistan Penal Code for defaming fellow filmmaker Sohail Javed in 2019. The case involved a letter Jami read out from an anonymous sexual assault survivor at the Lahooti Melo, a festival held in Jamshoro that focused on the #MeToo movement in its theme, and also posted to his Facebook page.

The letter that Jami read out was from an unnamed survivor who described being assaulted by a very well-known figure in the entertainment industry but did not name the alleged abuser. Jami didn’t name the alleged abuser in his Facebook post either. However, Javed argued that in the comment section of the post, many people guessed it was him and Jami did nothing to stop the speculation or deny the accusation.

He said the letter contained “specific references” such as referring to the alleged abuser as a “music video and TVC director”, saying “he was a panellist at a festival in Hyderabad”, “he introduced his 23 or 24-year-old son to me, who worked in the same profession as mine” and “descriptions of personal stories shared by the alleged predator [that] led people to believe that [Javed] is the subject of the accusation.” He argued that this caused irreparable damage to his reputation.