LAHORE: A sessions court on Monday sought a report from Akbari Gate police station on an application seeking registration of a criminal case against actor Saba Qamar, singer Bilal Saeed and others for shooting a song video in historic Masjid Wazir Khan.

Advocate Sardar Farhat Manzoor Khan filed the petition pleading that he submitted an application to the Akbari Gate police station SHO for registration of an FIR against the suspects for violating the sanctity of the mosque. However, he said the SHO did not take any legal action on the application.

The lawyer contended that the suspects desecrated the sanctity of the mosque by their act which also sparked an outrage among the citizens. He asked the court to order the police to lodge a case against the persons involved in the illegal act. Besides the actor and the singer, the petitioner also sought action against the production house of the music video and officials of the Auqaf department who permitted the shooting.

After hearing the arguments, Additional District & Sessions Judge Attiqur Rehman directed the SHO to submit a report on the matter on Wednesday (tomorrow).

Chief Minister Usman Buzdar had also taken notice of the issue and the Auqaf department suspended the manager of the Wazir Khan mosque.

APOLOGY: TV and film diva Saba Qamar and singer Bilal Saeed have apologized for the shooting in separate messages on social media.Ms Qamar on Instagram writes, “ The BTS video that’s making rounds on social media was just a circular movement to click stills of ,’ Qabool’ depicting a happily married couple right after their Nikah. Hurting or offending anyone or being disrespectful to a holy place is as unimaginable and unacceptable as for any decent human being”.

She further writes, “ Despite this if we have unknowingly hurt anyone’s sentiments we apologize to you all with all our heart, Love and Peace”.

The actor also tweeted that the clip was a prologue to the music video featuring a Nikah scene.

“It was neither shot with any sort of playback music nor has it been edited to the music track,” she tweeted.

Saeed, on the other hand, uploaded a lengthy video apology on social media.

“Me and Saba Qamar recently shot a Nikha sequence at Wazir Khan Mosque owing to which a massive misunderstanding took place. Emotions of many people got hurt. The impression which was gathered was that we were dancing in the mosque; we played music in the mosque and hurt the sanctity of the mosque but it’s totally a wrong impression. Alhamdullialh, I am a Muslim and my brought has taken place in a Muslim family. I cannot even think of hurting the sanctity of such a place. I swear to Allah Almighty that we did not play the music in the mosque neither we danced. The witness to it is the administration of the mosque which was present there. Just due to a clip this misunderstanding was created. You know prior to this shoot , photo shoots are often done in the mosques; we just did a little move without any music and that too for the photo shoot. But I would still say that unintentionally we have made a mistake. We accept it but me and Saba are human beings like all of us and humans do commit errors, we pray for forgiveness from Allah Almighty , I am excluding all the sequence of the video shoot shot at Wazir Khan mosque”, he wrote.

The manager of the Wazir Khan Mosque has been suspended from job while the Punjab auqaf minister has also promised a strict action. The organizers of the shoot, however, say they had requested prior permission, which was granted against payment of Rs30,000.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2020