When I spoke to singer and actor Meesha Shafi in July this year, it had been six years since our first meeting. Then, Meesha had been in Karachi for a taping of Pepsi’s Battle of the Bands, where she performed and was one of the judges, and we met once she had wrapped up filming. A few months earlier, Meesha made headlines when she alleged that one of the music industry’s biggest stars, Ali Zafar, had sexually harassed her — allegations that he has always denied. She faced considerable backlash online and in the media. I wanted to know how the experience had impacted her.

Her hotel room was dimly lit, and Meesha remained in the shadows, with only a lamp in a far corner of the room switched on. It was quiet, the sounds from the busy road nine floors below muffled by the closed windows. Meesha had wedged herself into the corner of an overstuffed sofa. Shooting had wrapped that day, and, after a week of 1am finishes, Meesha had got off early. I remember thinking that I’d expect a pop star to be out with friends, not alone in a hotel room after an early wrap. But for the past few months, as Meesha would tell me, she had been feeling “broken”.

In April 2018, Meesha, in a tweet, accused actor and singer Ali Zafar of multiple instances of sexual harassment. It was the first such high-profile case in Pakistan since the #MeToo movement of 2017 forced a reckoning with claims of sexual harassment and abuse that had gone unchecked for decades in almost every industry in countries across the world. For months, accusations against Hollywood producers, beloved actors and comedians made headlines.

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Both Meesha and Zafar are stars in Pakistan, and while she made her Hollywood debut in Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) opposite Riz Ahmed, Zafar was forging a career in Bollywood.

In her tweet, Meesha claimed there had been multiple incidents of “harassment of a physical nature” by Zafar. He denied the claims, and in June 2018, he filed a defamation case against Meesha for damages of 1 billion rupees (more than $3.5m at the current exchange rate but estimated to be over $8m seven years ago). Meesha filed a complaint regarding the alleged harassment before an ombudsperson overseeing such issues in the workplace, and it was rejected on technical grounds that she and Zafar did not have an employer-employee relationship (an appeal is pending). In January 2019, Meesha was placed under a court-ordered gag that restrained her from making any statements that could be deemed defamatory against Zafar while his case against her was heard.