Court seeks FIA response to Dania Shah’s bail plea

KARACHI: A court issued a notice to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Monday on an application of Syeda Dania Shah, widow of the late televangelist and politician Aamir Liaquat Hussain, seeking post-arrest bail in a case pertaining to allegedly recording and leaking his indecent video on social media.

Shah was arrested on December 15 in the case lodged against her by the FIA on the complaint of Hussain’s daughter, Dua Aamir.After the initial hearing on Monday, Judicial Magistrate (East) Mukesh Kumar issued notice to the FIA and the complainant to file their responses to the bail application, and adjourned the hearing until today (Tuesday).

The applicant’s lawyer Liaquat Gabol stated that the FIA had no evidence to prove his client’s alleged involvement in recording objectionable videos of her husband and then uploading them on social media. She was the legally wedded wife of the late lawmaker and couldn’t imagine defaming or humiliating him, he added.

“Under a pre-planned scheme and conspiracy, the applicant was made a scapegoat in this false case, because after the sudden death of her husband she, being a legal widow, asked to claim her legal share in the property of her husband,” the counsel said.

He alleged that she was implicated in the case at the behest of Hussain’s first wife Bushra in order to force her into renouncing her claim to the inherited property.The lawyer further argued that the charges against his client are bailable and do not fall within the prohibitory clause of Section 497(1) of the CrPC. He, therefore, pleaded with the court to order her release on bail.

Dania Shah was produced before the court on Saturday after she was arrested from her home in the Lodhran district of Punjab and brought to Karachi. The magistrate had rejected FIA’s plea for the grant of her physical remand for interrogation but allowed it to interrogate her inside jail.

On October 10, the FIA had registered the FIR under sections 20 (malicious code), 21 (cyberstalking), and 24 (legal recognition of offences committed in relation to information system) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. The complainant, Dua Aamir, alleged that Dania made an indecent video of her father and shared it on social media. She said: “My father Amir Liaquat died on June 9 this year due to his third wife. She made an absence video of my father and made it viral on social media, which caused serious stress and depression to my father, and for the reason he died.”