Attorney General Malik Qayyum on Sunday threatened he would lodge a criminal case in Pakistan courts against a top rights group that blamed him being aware of regime's secretive plans to rig parliamentary polls.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch on Friday released on its website an audiotape in which Malik allegedly acknowledged that Monday's balloting would be rigged massively.
He, however, promptly rejected the allegation and served the rights group with a legal notice, seeking a Rs300 million damage claim and a public apology. Qayyum, a top legal wizard of embattled President Pervez Musharraf, told media on Sunday the HRW must respond to his notice within one month.
Failing, Malik added, he would be stretching the world's most renowned rights organisation into a Pakistan court because his credibility was damaged in home country.
Qayyum staunchly denied that it was his voice and alleged the conversation of the recording been published as fabricated. The timing of release of the tape and news item before the election is to defame and embarrass the government, he added. He said "if the HRW did not remove the defamatory audio recording and the news item from its website, issued a public apology with the same degree of prominence, I will lodge civil/criminal case."
"As the act of defamation been stirred in Pakistan, I will file a suit at home in order to shed the clouds of misconception," he said.
The notice says "even if the news item or the fabricated audio tape is taken to be true (which is not), it is a gross violation of fundamental right of privacy and is a criminal offence." I too have the right of privacy; therefore, it is quite paradoxical that the HRW a watchdog for human rights, itself is disgracing the human rights, he said.
Qayyum said being Attorney General, I do not have anything to do with electioneering rather it is the duty of the Election Commission to deal with the affair. And I have no need to indulge myself in these affairs, he added.
He said, the HRW did not contact me to have my defensive version regarding the news item. It did not approach any official from the government and went for publication of one-sided version of the news. On the other hand the HRW claims that it tried to contact him but did not make that. He said that in order to have an authenticity of the conversation the HRW should have to publish the name of their source person.