ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said on Saturday a leading university in the country had decided to name its new media studies department after journalist Arshad Sharif who was killed in Kenya this October.
Sharif, who was widely viewed as a staunch PTI supporter, had to leave the country in August after facing a slew of court cases related to charges of sedition and others.
He also cited threats to his life before flying abroad but was later shot in Kenya by the police that said his vehicle had sped up and drove through a checkpoint.
A two-member Pakistani fact-finding team, which visited the East African state, challenged the police narrative, however, while calling the incident a case of "targeted assassination."
"Chairman PTI @ImranKhanPTI's announcement that he will make Arshad Sharif School of Journalism is now implemented as [Government College University's vice chancellor] Asghar Zaidi announces that new department of media studies' name will be Arshad Sharif School of Journalism," the PTI said in a Twitter post.
"An Endowment fund is also being set up for a new building of this school in GCU’s new campus," it added.
Khan announced in one of his anti-government rallies that his party would set up a media studies institute and name it after the slain journalist.
The former prime minister also maintained he had always admired Sharif's investigative journalism and held him in high esteem.