No legal error in ombudsperson setting aside Meesha's complaint: LHC

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday said there was no apparent legal error in the Punjab ombudsperson's decision to set aside a plea related to singer Meesha Shafi's complaint of sexual harassment.

In a hearing presided by LHC judge, Justice Shahid Karim, and pertaining to Meesha's petition against Punjab ombudsperson's move to set aside her sexual harassment case, the court summoned her and Ali Zafar's lawyers.

Meesha's legal team argued that the province's woman ombudsperson, as well as Punjab governor, had illegally dismissed the complaint that the singer had filed against her peer, Zafar, whom she had accused of sexual harassment on more than one occasion back in April 2018.

The singer's team further argued that the definition of workplace in the Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace Act — aimed to safeguard women — was not limited to women working day jobs.

The ombudsperson, the lawyers noted, had rejected the complaint based on the technicality that Meesha was not an employee of the person she had accused of sexual harassment — Ali Zafar.

The judge, consequently, remarked that there did not seem to be any legal error prima facie in the Punjab ombudsperson's decision to set aside her sexual harassment complaint.