Both US Blogger Cynthia D Ritchie and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Senator Rehman Malik approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Thursday to mutually withdraw their cases against one another.
Justice Amir Farooq accepted Ritchie’s request to withdraw the petition seeking the registration of a criminal case against the senator, while the former interior minister also withdrew his petition for registration of a defamation case against the US blogger.
The news of the withdrawal from both sides was confirmed by Ritchie’s lawyer Imran Feroz Malik.
Last year in May, in a video broadcast live on Facebook, Ritchie had alleged that a senior PPP leader had raped her while two other PPP leaders — a federal minister and former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gillani — had “manhandled” and assaulted her on a separate occasion.
At the time, the US blogger had said she was choosing to reserve “some of the more graphic details” as her audience might include children. However, she had stated that she would be “happy to go into more detail” with neutral investigative journalists.
The allegations leveled by Cynthia had gone viral and became headlines on both television and newspapers.
At the time, there had been speculation that the feud between the PPP and the US blogger was due to the latter’s “slanderous” remarks on Twitter against late party leader Benazir Bhutto.
In this regard, the PPP had filed a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for Cynthia’s tweet and had claimed that her accusations against of rape party leaders are in response to that.
