King's / Queen's Bench Division of the High Court

KB-2022-003483 - [2025] EWHC 1912 (KB)

Fecha: 25-Jul-2025

The submissions

The submissions

127.

In his skeleton argument, Mr Kelly identified the following matters as evidencing the reasonableness of the Defendant’s belief that publication was in the public interest:

The public interest value of the videos outweighed the potential harm;

ii)

The topic was one of legitimate public interest, given the Claimants’ high profiles as well-known political figures who were in positions of influence and power;

iii)

Mr Sabeel was directly involved and was a reliable source;

iv)

The Defendant had conducted a thorough interview, sought corroborating evidence, where possible, and had invited comment from the Claimants, which they had declined to give;

There was a degree of urgency to the publication as it was a developing story that was of considerable interest to the Kashmiri Pakistani community; and

vi)

The report was balanced and fair, providing context and attribution.

128.

In his oral submissions, Mr Kelly emphasised the Defendant’s evidence as to the investigations that had been undertaken before publication and as to the presence of the disclaimers.

129.

The Claimants’ Reply disputed that the Defendant had reasonably believed that publishing the statements complained of was in the public interest. At trial, Mr Wilcox submitted that the Defendant had failed to show that he reasonably believed that publication was in the public interest in light of the following, in particular:

Given how serious the allegations were, a rigorous investigation was required before publication;

ii)

However, the Defendant had failed to undertake any investigation into Mr Sabeel’s allegations. No supporting evidence of any investigation had been disclosed nor witness statements from Mr Qureshi’s team and his answers in cross examination were contradictory and confused and inconsistent with passages in the Defence;

iii)

The Defendant did not approach the Claimants for comment. The accounts given by the Defendant and by Mr Ahmed were inconsistent in a number of respects and, again, there was no supporting documentary evidence. The First Claimant had consistently denied that this had occurred;

iv)

The tone and format of the videos was far from neutral;

There was no attempt to put the other side of the story in the videos, even though an earlier interview with Mr Sabeel had been published (when he was in custody) in which he had admitted that he (rather than the First Claimant) had burned down Benish Jaraal’s office. Even if Mr Sabeel no longer accepted that account and contended it had been coerced from him, fairness and balance required the Defendant to raise it and explore it with him;

vi)

Given it was apparent that the Defendant did not believe in the truth of what Mr Sabeel had said in the interview, it was not reasonable for him to publish the videos; and

vii)

The evidence of Ms Sultana showed that the disclaimers were not present at the time when the videos were published and the Defendant had not provided evidence to undermine this.