AJK Lawmakers
The High Court of England and Wales has delivered a significant defamation ruling with far-reaching political implications in both the United Kingdom and Pakistan.
The court ordered Abrar Qureshi, a well-known UK-based YouTuber of Kashmiri origin, to pay over £260,000 in damages to two elected representatives from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) for publishing “serious, unfounded and harmful allegations” against them. The judgment was handed down by Justice Heather Williams DBE following a trial held from July 7 to 9.
The case was brought by Chaudhry Muhammad Yasin, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) regional president and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), along with his son Chaudhry Amar Yasin, an AJK cabinet member. They alleged that the defamatory videos posted on November 1, 2021, as part of Abrar Qureshi’s popular ‘Gorakh Dhanda’ programme, severely damaged their political and personal reputations.
The videos featured an interview with Chaudhry Muhammad Sabeel, a former employee of Chaudhry Muhammad Yasin, who accused the claimants of criminal misconduct, including blackmail, sexual abuse, torture, corruption, and abuse of public office.
Justice Williams found that Qureshi made no reasonable effort to verify these serious allegations before broadcasting them to his large online audience. On the first day of the trial, Qureshi abandoned his defenses of truth and honest opinion, leaving him unable to justify the defamatory content under public interest protections.
The judge criticized Qureshi for falling “well short of the standards expected of a responsible journalist,” especially given his substantial reach on social media platforms, where he boasts over 190,000 YouTube subscribers and 700,000 Facebook followers.
The court noted that Qureshi’s failure to seek the Yasin family’s response or conduct basic fact-checking made his publication grossly irresponsible.
The judge further observed that the defamatory allegations caused serious harm to the claimants’ personal and professional standing, both in Pakistan and within the Kashmiri diaspora in the UK. The tone and repetitive nature of the videos, combined with the lack of challenge to the accusations, led many viewers to believe the claims were true.
Although the court acknowledged that the claimants may have overstated the extent of reputational damage in some parts of their testimony, it was satisfied that the threshold for serious harm was clearly met.
As a result, each claimant was awarded £130,000 in libel damages, including aggravated damages to reflect the distress and reputational damage suffered. Additionally, the defendant was ordered to pay interest of £21,829 to each claimant and an interim payment of £65,000 towards legal costs by August 8.
The court also issued a permanent injunction restraining Qureshi from republishing the defamatory material or anything similar. He was ordered to post a court-approved summary of the judgment across all his social media platforms within seven days, in accordance with Section 12 of the UK Defamation Act 2013.
Legal experts have highlighted that this ruling underscores the limits of free expression on digital platforms, particularly when reputations are damaged across national borders. It also illustrates the robustness of UK libel law in cross-jurisdictional cases involving digital media.
After the verdict, speaking briefly in Muzaffarabad, Chaudhry Muhammad Yasin welcomed the judgment as a “vindication of truth and accountability,” signaling a significant moment for political figures seeking legal recourse against defamatory content online.
