KARACHI: Additional District & Session judge central deferred framing of charge against Aqeel Karim Dhedhi, Chairman AKD Group, Mubashir Luqman, news anchor on a complaint filed by JS Bank Limited in a case of alleging accused persons entered into a criminal conspiracy to defame ex-chairman of the complainant Bank.
10 October 2020 was fixed for framing charge against the above mentioned suspects, however, due to suspension court proceedings announced by Karachi Bar Association (KBA), court deferred hearing for Oct 31, 2020.
It needs to be mentioned here that 3rd accused Rana Azeem has been declared as proclaimed offender on October 12, 2019 and court directed its office to his case be kept on dornment file till his arrest and issued perpetual his warrant.
Earlier, counsel for the accused persons entered into a criminal conspiracy to defame ex- chairman of the complainant Bank and the complainant itself along with a host of other companies and organizations associated (whether directly or indirectly) with him and the complainant bank, as per of this conspiracy Mubashir Luqman hosted a series of programmers on his show ‘Khara Sach’ with Mubashir Luqman aired on the Samaa Television News Channel directly targeting Ali Jehangir Siddiqui and companies and organizations associated with him dated March 13, 26, 2018 and April 02, 2018.
Counsel argues that PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) has in its proceedings dated April 25, 2019 also imposed a fine of Rs300,000 on Samaa TV (Jaag Broadcasting System (Pvt) Ltd.
Citing above mentioned accused persons, counsel pleaded that aforesaid defamatory remarks were made and broadcasted throughout the world by the accused persons with common intent to harm the reputation of JS Bank and JS Group in furtherance of their aforementioned criminal conspiracy against the complainant, the accused no 1 and 2 were the originators of the said defamatory remarks as such the actions of the accused persons amount to offences defined under section 499 P.P.C and section 120-A P.P.C read with section 34 P.P.C triable by a sessions court.
