Court stops Sohail Javed and Jami from taking any legal action in defamation suit

A local court has ordered 'status quo' in director Sohail Javed's defamation suit against director Jami. This means that both parties cannot take any legal action in the case. Karachi South Additional District Judge Samina Ghouri heard the case on Tuesday. Javed's lawyer argued that Jami should be restrained from sharing any defamatory content against his client. Jami's lawyer, on the other hand, argued on the maintainability of the petition. Javed filed a Rs1 billion defamation suit against Jami for alluding that he is a “sexual predator” on March 9. He had first sent a legal notice to the director over a Facebook post from February 2. Jami had shared a letter by a survivor of sexual assault by a “music video and television commercial director”. Related: Filmmaker Sohail Javed files Rs1b defamation suit against Jami According to the legal notice filed on February 18, Jami alluded to Javed in different ways: “divorced”, “panelist at a festival in Hyderabad” and cancer survivor among others. “You have not negated anyone who is taking our client’s name and reaffirmed that the publication is about our client by posting a screen-shot which clearly mentions our client’s name,” reads the lawsuit. It said that the post affected Javed’s “reputation and integrity beyond reckoning”. The accusations are “totally false” and “concocted and do not even have an iota of truth in them”, the notice said. The suit was filed after Javed’s lawyer said that Jami failed to “tender an unconditional apology” and delete the post. They have asked for Rs500 million in damages and Rs500 million to compensate for their client’s “mental torture”. Jami filed a reply the same day as Javed filed the suit. In his reply, Jami denied the charges as being “presumptuous”. “The contents of the legal notice are based on conjecture, speculation and presumption and as such vehemently denied by our client,” the reply says. The suit mentions that the social media post does not name any individual. Jami never “insinuated or alluded to any specific person”. Follow SAMAA English on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.