Zubair Qureshi
The US blogger, documentary maker and producer Cynthia D Ritchie has withdrawn charges of rape against former Interior Minister Senator Rehman A Malik and backed out from the plea in which she had sought orders from the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for registration of a criminal case against Malik.
On Thursday, counsel for the US blogger Imran Feroz Malik informed the IHC that his client was no longer interested in pursuing the case.
He also informed that Rehman Malik had also withdrawn his petitions against her. Justice Amir Farooq while accepting the request dismissed Ritchie’s petition.
The US blogger in a video message had leveled startling allegations last year in June and ‘revealed’ that she was raped by the former Interior Minister when she visited his residence in the Minister’s Enclave Islamabad in a matter relating to her visa.
According to her, she had raised the issue with the US mission in Islamabad and some friends who advised her to keep quiet as those were the days when Osama Bin Laden was hunted by the US marines on the Pakistani soil and the Obama administration didn’t look keen to go into another diplomatic row with the then PPP government.
Soon after her charges were reported in the media, Rehman Malik vehemently denied them and in return filed a defamation suit against her.
Ritchie, who identifies herself as a media director and producer had also accused two other leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and former Health Minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin of inappropriately touching and hugging her. Those accusations had been denied by both the PPP leaders too. “In 2011, I was raped by the former interior minister Rehman Malik. That’s right. I’ll say it again. I was raped by then interior minister Rehman Malik,” Ritchie had said in a video post last year on June 6.
She had added further “I was physically manhandled by [former] federal health minister Makhdoom Shahabu-ddin and PM Yousaf Gilani while he was staying at President House.”
About the visit at Rehman Malik’s residence, she had said, “I thought it was a meeting about my visa but I was given flowers/ a drugged drink. I kept quiet.”
