Islamabad, 06 June 2020 – Talha Akhtar:
The conflict between the PPP and Pakistan-based American blogger Cynthia D. Ritchie intensified on Friday after the latter came out with allegations of rape and assault against some top PPP leaders.
Ritchie, who was at the centre of a controversy last week when she tweeted what the PPP described as “derogatory and slanderous remarks” about slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, accused former interior minister Senator Rehman Malik of having raped her in Islamabad in 2011 — a charge the senior PPP leader has strongly denied.
“In 2011, I was raped by the former interior minister Rehman Malik. That’s right, I’ll say it again. I was raped by the then interior minister Rehman Malik,” she said a live video on her Facebook page, also accusing former federal minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin and ex-prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of “physically manhandling” her while Gilani was staying at the “President’s House”.
PPP senior leader and Senator Rehman Malik has vehemently denied the rape allegation against him by US blogger in Pakistan, Cythnia Ritchie, calling them ‘baseless, shameful, and inappropriate’.
Gilani also denied the allegations in a statement.
Ritchie said she was reserving “some of the more graphic details” because her audience could include children, but added that she would be “happy to go into more detail” with neutral investigative journalists.
