KARACHI - Eight out of thirteen hockey Olympians who were served legal notices by Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) allegedly for levelling human trafficking and other charges against the hockey body held an informal meeting here Friday and later informed the waiting media that they would respond to the notice.
Those who attended the special meeting were Islahuddin, Akhtarul Islam, Shahnaz Shaikh, Samiullah, Qamar Zia, Naveed Alam, Qamar Ibrahim, and Ayaz Mahmood. Five others Olympians who have been served with the notice but were not present in Friday’s meeting were Shahbaz Ahmed, Tahir Zaman, Saeed Khan, Salim Nazim and Khalid Mahmood.
In a briefing held after the meeting, the media was informed that as the notices have been served separately, all the players would respond separately to the legal document.
They said that they were completely united and any speculation otherwise was misplaced and wrong.
They said there was no question of submitting any apology to the PHF. They said they would take up the notices through legal means. The PHF recently issued legal notices to the players after they allegedly issued a combine statement in a section of the media and levelled some specific serious allegations on the PHF.
The hockey body issued notices to the players and demanded damages from those who were served with the legal document for making allegations against the PHF for alleged human trafficking besides other charges.