Former investigative journalist and television host Iqrar Ul Hassan has made a startling confession about his highly popular investigative show Sar-e-Aam, revealing that he is actually relieved to have left the programme and has no plans to return.
Iqrar, who stepped away from Sar-e-Aam some time ago, was recently asked during an interview whether he would ever resume hosting the show. His response offered a surprisingly candid glimpse into the emotional burden he says he carried while exposing alleged wrongdoing on national television.
“No, I am very happy that Allah has taken this burden off my head,” Iqrar said.
The veteran host went on to reveal that he would frequently question whether the people featured in the programme had actually committed crimes serious enough to warrant being publicly exposed before the entire country.
“I always felt that perhaps the crime of the people we were exposing or showing was not big enough for them to be disgraced in front of the whole of Pakistan,” he explained.
Iqrar recalled instances where individuals were exposed over relatively small offences and admitted that the experience sometimes left him deeply uncomfortable.
“If someone took a bribe of Rs2,000, or did something wrong, and then you put them on television and expose them, I would feel that perhaps the punishment was greater than the crime they had committed,” he said.
The admission sheds an entirely different light on the investigative programme, which became widely recognised for its sting operations and public exposés.
According to Iqrar, the very act of putting someone on television and publicly revealing their wrongdoing could sometimes become a punishment in itself one that he felt might outweigh the original offence.
“I can call it a kind of regret because I feel that for many people, being shown on television is a greater punishment than the crime they committed,” he added.
His remarks have sparked curiosity among viewers, particularly because Sar-e-Aam became synonymous with Iqrar’s investigative journalism and his confrontational approach to exposing alleged corruption and malpractice.
Despite the show’s immense popularity, Iqrar’s latest comments suggest that his experience behind the scenes was far more emotionally complicated than viewers may have realised.