• Source:JND
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A heated scuffle between two Pakistani journalists broke out at a London cafe last week, sparking outrage on social media as video went viral. The clash occurred at a press conference addressed by Salman Akram Raja, one of the important aides of imprisoned former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and Secretary General of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The video captures Safina Khan, a London-based journalist working for Pakistan's NEO News, and Asad Malik, a UK journalist working for ARY News, hurling verbal abuse at each other.

Safina Khan Accuses Rival Journalists 

In a string of tweets on X (then Twitter), Safina Khan complained that she had been harassed, verbally abused, and even threatened to be killed by Asad Malik and other Pakistani journalists such as Mohsin Naqvi, ARY's Farid Qureshi, and Hum News reporter Rafeeq. “During Salman Akram Raja’s coverage, I was harassed and abused… They threatened to kill me,” she wrote, tagging London Police and appealing for protection.


She also alleged that she had reported the same threats earlier, but nothing was done. Safina accused PTI members of harassing her for quite some time and even attempted to perform an acid attack on her.

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The controversial video captures the two journalists engaged in a bitter exchange of words, including screaming obscenities and personal abuses involving their respective families. They used words like "pig" repeatedly during the exchange, which has since drawn criticism from the journalist community and social media users. “If a man gets up and abuses me or my mother, I will abuse him twice as much… The more you scream, the more you will get punished,” Safina Khan later posted online

In reply to the allegations, Asad Malik rejected Khan's accusations as "false and baseless" and accused her of provoking the fight. “These are false and baseless allegations, consistent with her pattern of past behavior. Multiple eyewitnesses can attest to the facts,” Malik wrote on social media. He accused Safina Khan of abusing him and others for no reason. He also said that a widely shared video of the incident was edited and put out on social media by ARY journalist Farid Qureshi on a fake account.

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