Filmmaker Jamshed Mahmood Raza, widely known as Jami, has been granted interim bail by the Sindh High Court, just days after being sentenced to two years in jail for defamation.

 

His lawyer confirmed the news on Thursday and said that an appeal against the conviction has already been filed. Jami has been ordered to submit a surety of Rs50,000 along with personal recognition bonds.

 

Jami’s legal team argued in the appeal that the trial court wrongly shifted the burden of proof upon the appellant [Jami], contrary to settled principles of criminal law and natural justice, where the entire onus lay upon the prosecution to prove the alleged offence beyond reasonable doubt.

 

They further claimed that the evidence on record is unreliable and highly contradictory, and the prosecution has failed to establish the offence beyond reasonable doubt.

 

The appeal requests the court to suspend the sentence and overturn the decision after hearing the arguments.

 

Earlier this week, a Karachi additional sessions court sentenced Jami to two years in prison and imposed a fine of Rs10,000 under Section 500 of the Pakistan Penal Code for allegedly defaming fellow filmmaker Sohail Javed in 2019.

 

The case was based on a letter that Jami read out at the Lahooti Melo festival in Jamshoro, which focused on the #MeToo movement. The letter was written by an anonymous sexual assault survivor and shared experiences of being abused by a famous person in the entertainment industry. Jami also posted the letter on his Facebook page.

 

Though the letter did not name anyone directly, Sohail Javed claimed that several details in the letter led people to believe it was about him. He alleged that Jami “did nothing to stop the speculation or deny the accusation.”

 

Javed said the letter contained “specific references” like “he was a music video and TVC director,” “he was a panellist at a festival in Hyderabad,” and “he introduced his 23 or 24-year-old son to me, who worked in the same profession as mine.”

 

He added that descriptions of personal stories shared by the alleged predator [that] led people to believe that [Javed] is the subject of the accusation. According to Javed, this caused “irreparable damage” to his reputation.