Pukaar or Irtiqa, Who Owns Mehar Ali?

We saw a lot of controversies recently between the two bands about having the rights of the song. Last night, PakMediaRevolution decided to publish a story on the situation, without proper verification and said no to Pukaar. It was an unexpected action by a popular trusted media, since no proofs or verifications were mentioned in the article. The action was no doubt immature, personal and badly ruined the image of the band with inclusion of this video against Pukaar, which could only be acceptable if they had mentioned even a single source of information.

On talking to everyone, it was clear that song originally doesn’t belong to both Pukaar or Irtiqa. Mehar Ali was composed by Raza in 1995 who initiated a band called Aatish couple of years ago and recorded the song. Apart from Raza, Aatish consisted of Shahan Ali of Irtiqa and Omer Kabeer of Pukaar. After Aatish ended up, Shahan joined Irtiqa and re-recorded the song in Jonathan Nawaz’s studio. Pukaar also re-recorded the song at Sam’s studio, the only difference was with Raza’s verbal permission. On having conversation with manager of Pukaar, he accepted that song was composed by Raza and band ‘bought’ the rights from him. On having a conversation with Shahan Ali of Irtiqa, he also accepted that the song was composed by Raza (and Shahan himself) but the song is registered under Raza’s name, who is not willingly giving rights to any of them (which clearly means, Irtiqa can’t use the song). On having a telephonic conversation with Raza, he declined the claims of Shahan and said it’s only composed by me long before the band was formed. He also told us that Pukaar had already taken the verbal permission long ago, and the rights have officially been given to the band today on papers.