Meesha Shafi Claimed Rights Over Overload’s ‘Batti’, Took Video Down

April 6, 2011

Meera Shafi, more commonly known as Meesha Shafi is ex-vocalist of Overload, who worked with the band in the last album “Pichal Pairee“. Earlier this year in February, two key members of the band, Meesha and her husband Mahmood Rehman left the band.

The statements that Mahmood and Farhad released, mentioned the reason as professional differences.

Mahmood said

I felt like the work I did with Overload had reached the maximum potential that it could. Playing guitar in an essentially percussion-centric band was eventually limiting and I wanted to move on to making music in a more dynamic dimension. I also felt that with Overload, there were growing creative and practical differences and these were fast proving irreconcilable.

On the other hand, Farhad said there’s no room for Mahmood or Meesha to return to overload

Shafi’s a very ambitious girl and she will go far, but they cannot come back to the band since they abandoned it when it needed them the most.

The disagreement surfaced when Overload wished to perform and release the original video of ‘Dhol Bajay Ga’ minus Meesha so they could continue to perform in her absence. Farhad Humayun said Meesha found that unacceptable and so Overload had to value its priorities and move ahead.

It’s very difficult to sustain a band. I have been working assiduously towards the band for the last seven years. We can’t hold the band hostage to a particular member.

Since Farhad is the founding member of the band overload, he did what he had to and released “Dhol Bajay Ga” minus the Shafi by the name “Batti“. The song was welcomed by the community and we found it very entertaining. Unfortunately, the disagreement stayed even after Meesha and Mahmood left the band. Soon after Farhad released the video of “Batti”, Shafi reported video based on copyright claim.

It is unclear if she was entitled to do so or not considering overload is Farhad’s band and he is more likely to have ownership of the content that was created by Overload. We have already written to Farhad and Mahmood to know more about the ownership of the content. We will keep you posted as we hear more.

Update 1:

We have heard from Farhad, below is excerpt from our communication with him

I have legal rights over everything ever produced by Overload. I am the sole proprietor of Overload since 2003. Furthermore Batti is legally a new song all together with different lyrics, different title and different music as compared to Dhol bajay ga (which is also my property). The whole world knows Overload is my band. Hence the tv channels are airing the song too.

Update 2:

We have also heard from Mahmood regarding the situation, below is excerpt from his statement

The matter is currently subjudice (pending before the relevant court). Making any further statements only serves to add to the already existing controversy and is therefore counterproductive. The matter is pending before the appropriate legal forum and we will wait for the law to draw its necessary conclusions.

[Thanks Momi for the hat tip]