Iffat Umar has said that Ali Zafar kept messaging her for eight years, expressing his “tender love and respect” for her.
In a Facebook post, she questioned why Ali messaged her to congratulate her on her daughter’s wedding, while also calling her out after she showed support for Meesha Shafi.
It is pertinent to mention that Iffat expressed disappointment over the final verdict delivered by a Lahore sessions court. The verdict, ruling in Zafar’s favour, ordered Shafi to pay him Rs5 million.
Umar wrote that the loss is not hers. Shafi’s, or her mother Saba Hameed’s, saying they could pay the Rs5 million in damages “right now.” “It’s about the fact that women will continue to be touched inappropriately, even when married, even by men who are “friends” of their husbands. We all know this is the reality of a man’s world.”
Further, Umar shared that people who were involved were “silenced, pressured, bought, and scared” and that the entire support system had been broken. “On top of that, we were accused of running a foreign agenda, of being paid huge amounts in dollars,” she wrote, adding that she would reiterate, and even prove in court, that she is “ready to open all my bank accounts, everything.”
In her post, she noted that the verdict not only impacts Shafi but also other women whose experiences of harassment go unrecognised due to a lack of evidence, leaving them vulnerable to public ridicule. “The truth is, every woman knows that at some point in her life, she has been physically harassed. Sometimes in a room full of people, someone touches you in a way you cannot even process, and you cannot even speak. We have all gone through this — as children, as young women, and even today,” she wrote.
In 2018, when Shafi accused Zafar of sexual harassment, he filed a defamation suit claiming reputational harm and distress to his family.
