ISLAMABAD: A day after US blogger Cynthia D. Ritchie accused PPP senior leader Senator Rehman Malik of having raped her in 2011, the latter on Sunday sent a defamation notice to the former.

In the notice sent through his lawyer Abdur Rehman Bajwa, Mr Malik termed the allegations levelled by Ms Ritchie “false, frivolous and baseless”. He said it was a pack of lies to damage his national and international reputation.

The PPP leader said that he was fighting to protect the honour and respect of his leader Benazir Bhutto who had sacrificed her life for the nation and he could face such false and fabricated allegations in this fight.

Senator Malik said that he had been continuously receiving death and arrest threats for his vocal statements against the government, but the opponents must know that he was not afraid of jail as he had already seen even the death cell.

Cynthia Ritchie asked to pay Rs500m in damages and apologise for ‘bogus’ allegation of rape

He said: “When my opponents found nothing against me they began my character assassination.” He said his conscience was clear and in time he would expose the conspirators behind the character assassination of Benazir Bhutto and himself and show them mirror. He said he had no personal enmity with Ms Ritchie and respected women that was why he would not come up with any counter remarks against her. However, time would tell whether she was projecting a soft image of Pakistan or not, he added.

Mr Malik said that when he was interior minister, the US blogger accompanied by the daughter of Azam Khan Swati, the then minister, had approached him in his office with a request for extension of her visa. He said the Pakistan Peoples Party had also filed a complaint against the US blogger with the local police, which was being processed.

In the legal notice, the senator’s lawyer said: “You accused my client through your Twitter account @CynthiaDRitchie, on June 2, 2020, for illegitimate issuance of POC to a foreigner as under: @NadraMedia check how an Arab was given a Pakistan Origin Card (POC) in the name of Aref Al Zarooni w/ Address 41 Khayaban E Muslim DHA Phase 6? How can a foreigner get a POC? What role did @SenRehmanMalik play as Ministry of Interior to issue to a foreigner? Is this state-level espionage?

“That the accusation of issuing illegal POC was strongly rebutted by NADRA as a reply to your above tweet, from NADRA’s official verified account @NadraMedia as under: Pakistan Origin Cards are issued to eligible foreigners. The POC of Mr. ArefAlzarooni was issued legitimately as per NADRA POC Issuance Rules 2002.”

The lawyer said that after Ms Ritchie failed in this episode, she started Mr Malik’s character assassination by levelling bogus allegation on June 5 through her Twitter and Facebook accounts that she was raped by the former interior minister.

The lawyer said his client soon discovered that the US blogger’s video message had gone viral on social media and appeared on print media and TV networks.

Therefore, he said, Mr Malik was constrained to demand from her as token damages an amount of Rs500 million in addition to prompt withdrawal of the allegation in the same manner in which the video message was released and posted on social, print and electronic media, within 15 days of receipt of this legal notice, besides an unqualified apology, otherwise Ms Ritchie would face legal action.

In a couple of television appearances on Sunday, Ms Ritchie gave an account of the alleged rape incident, saying she was drugged before the assault by Mr Malik at his official residence in the ministers’ enclave in Islamabad. She also claimed that she has more details of this and other incidents and will reveal them at a later stage.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2020