omams brethren - A Pakistani anti-terrorism court handed down 26-year prison sentences to famed Bollywood actress Veena Malik, her husband, businessman Asad Bashir Khan, and Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, owner of the Jang-Geo media group on charges of blasphemy. The court ordered the police to arrest the three as well as to sell all of their properties. None of the defendants were present in the court. Vanik and her husband live in Dubai. The court also fined the host of the show as well as two other guests $16,600. Those three were also ordered to surrender their passports and sell their properties. The charges surround a video (see below) made by Malik and her husband re-enacting their wedding. At one point in the video musicians play an alleged munqabat, or religious verse, concerning the marriage of the daughter of Islam’s prophet, Mohammed. Vanik’s detractors claim that that during the few seconds that the munqabat was playing, the actors could be seen laughing and joking with one another as well as dancing. “Some publications were writing that we danced to the qawwali [Sufi devotional music popular] but that is not true. If you see the footage, while they played the munqabat, my husband and I were sitting in a very respectful manner and did not say a single word which was disrespectful or blasphemous,” Malik contends. After the episode aired, the senior vice president of a chapter of the Muslim religious organization, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, filed complaints against the couple, the owner of the media group, the show’s hostess and the two other guests on the show. Jamaat charged that the use of religious music in the video defiled the family of Mohammed. The complaints, called FIRs, first information reports, were lodged in 150 police stations around the country. However, the order was only enacted in Gilgit, an area under the jurisdiction of both Pakistan and Kashmir. Court decisions in Gilgit are generally not enforced in courts in the rest of Pakistan. Lawyers for the couple have managed to have a number of the FIRs dismissed in some of the locations and are preparing an appeal to the conviction in Gilgit. Malik, who expressed shock and outrage over the verdict, had originally said she planned to return to Pakistan to fight the court order. “Twenty-six years is a lifetime,” said Malik. “But I have faith in higher courts in Pakistan. When the final verdict comes, it will do justice to me. Nothing bad is going to happen.” However, later reports say the couple will not return to Pakistan until the court overturns the verdict for fear being imprisoned. youtu.be/o9TR6j-jTnY
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 20:15:39 +0000
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