Lahore, June 24 : Actor-singer Ali Zafar has filed a defamation suit in a district court here against singer Meesha Shafi, who accused him of sexual harassment two months ago on social media. The suit claims damages of Rs 1 billion.

Filed under the Defamation Ordinance 2002 on Saturday, Zafar has said in the notice that Shafi had caused "tremendous injury" to his "reputation, goodwill, livelihood" through "false, slanderous and defamatory" allegations, according to Geo News

The suit reads: "As the defamatory statements are patently false, it can only be concluded that this malicious campaign has been launched against the plaintiff as part of a motivated conspiracy to tarnish the plaintiff's good image through making false accusations.

"The defendant has associated herself with the global #MeToo movement, with one of the launchers of the #MeToo movement Rose McGowan labeling the defendant as 'a heroine for our times'."

In the breakdown of the Rs 1 billion damages, the notice read: "Be that as it may, that due to the defamatory campaign being spearheaded by the defendant, the plaintiff besides special damages in case of defamation further suffered the following damages: Mental torture Rs 2 crore, Loss of contacts Rs 8 crore, Loss of reputation/goodwill Rs 50 crore, Loss of business opportunities Rs 40 crore."

Earlier, Shafi had confirmed she had received a legal notice sent by Zafar's counsel, asking the singer-cum-actor to delete her tweet alleging harassment and issue an apology on Twitter, failing which he would file a Rs 1 billion defamation case against her.

It was in April that Shafi took to Twitter to publicly accuse Zafar of physically harassing her on "more than one occasion".

Ali had denied the allegations, saying he would take the matter through the courts of law.

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Kolkata (PTI): Dr. Vece Paes, a member of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games bronze-winning Indian hockey team and father of legendary tennis player Leander Paes, died here on Thursday morning. He was 80 years old.

Paes, who was suffering from advanced stage of Parkinson's disease, was admitted to a city hospital on Tuesday morning.

Paes, who donned multiple hats in his long association with Indian sports, was a midfielder in the Indian hockey team. He also played several sports such as football, cricket and rugby and served as the president of the Indian Rugby Football Union from 1996 to 2002.

A sports medicine doctor, he worked as a medical consultant with several sports bodies including the Asian Cricket Council, the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the Indian Davis Cup team.