Unless you have been living under a rock, chances are that you must have read the story of Shaista Wahidi, a TV host of a morning show on Geo TV, marrying Mir Shakeel-ur-Rehman, the editor in chief of Jang Group of Newspapers and Group Chairman of Geo TV Network.
This rumor was carried by various Pakistani blogs, origin of which is still unknown, and then story went viral on social media, given the spice it had got in it.
According to Pakium.com Mir Shakeel Ur Rehman, also known as MSR, finally decided to react by giving a strong response in shape of a legal notice that his legal consultant has served to 30+ blogs that had carried the news. Notice also demands Rs. 1 Billion (from each blogger) as compensation for the loss of MSR’s reputation.
Ahmed and Qazi, a law firm based out of Karachi, confirmed ProPakistani that legal notice was served by them on behalf of Mir Shakeel Ur Rehman to over two dozen websites.
A copy of the legal notice is displayed below:
As Google Suggests, reports of Shaista Wahidi marrying Mir Shakeel Ur Rehman are still available online, hinting that bloggers either don’t know the stature of legal notice or they aren’t much concerned over the issue. At the same time we have also seen apologies by select bloggers on the instance.
Ahmed & Qazi said that they are yet to decide about filing the lawsuit against those bloggers who haven’t apologized by removing the story from their websites.
Bloggers must learn the lesson from this episode and they should never copy/paste stories from other websites without verifying facts.