Pak court accuses ‘Hindi Medium’ star Saba Qamar of shooting dance video at historic mosque in Lahore

A Pakistani court on Wednesday charged Hindi Medium star Saba Qamar in a case registered against her for shooting a ‘dance video’ at a historic mosque here last year. Ms. Qamar and singer Bilal Saeed were both present in the court of Judicial Magistrate Javeria Bhatti when they were charge-sheeted for desecrating the Wazir Khan Mosque (in Lahore’s old city). The magistrate directed the prosecution to produce their witnesses on the next hearing on October 14.

Both the suspects pleaded “not guilty” in court. He said that he would fight the case. Dressed in a black burqa (covered with a dupatta from head to toe), Ms Qamar looked terrified when she was indicted in a case she had filed on frivolous charges.

The multi-talented actress said that she has been booked under “baseless facts”. “There was no dance or music in the mosque. I have been falsely implicated in this case.”

Lahore police last year registered a case against Qamar and Saeed under section 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) for allegedly ‘desecrating’ the mosque Wazir Khan in the old city of Lahore.

According to the FIR, both the artists had trampled upon the sanctity of the mosque by making a dance video and this act also caused outrage among the people of Pakistan. The Punjab government had also sacked two senior officials for violating the sanctity of the mosque.

After severe criticism and even death threats on social media, Saba Qamar and Bilal Saeed had apologized for their act. “It was a music video with a nikah (marriage) scene. It was neither shot with any kind of background music nor was it edited into a music track,” she had said.

Saba Qamar whose work in Bollywood films was appreciated, also did the biopic of social media sensation Qandeel Baloch. He had received death threats on social media for “un-Islamic action”.

She was warned on social media that she might face the fate of Qandeel Baloch, who was killed in 2016 by her brother for ‘insulting family honour’.

Various religious parties, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, also staged demonstrations in the city demanding “severe punishment” for the artist couple for committing a sin.