ISLAMABAD: Police in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Thursday registered a case against former prime minister Imran Khan and several of his senior party leaders under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, following a clash between the two sides a day before in the eastern city of Lahore.
The incident took place as members of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party prepared to hold a public rally to launch an election campaign in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces after the dissolution of their legislative bodies at the beginning of the year.
Khan decided to call off the rally after the clash, as his party accused the police of killing a PTI activist in official custody.
The police complaint against the former premier and his party leaders said the situation developed when nearly 300 to 400 armed PTI activists blocked the flow of traffic.
“They were chanting slogans against the government and threatening national security institutions that ‘our leadership – Imran Khan, Hassaan Niazi, Farrukh Habib, Fawad Chaudhry, Hammad Azhar, Mahmood Rashid and Ijaz Chaudhry etc. – have given us the target to destroy the government and its institutions brick by brick,” the document said.
It added the PTI activists were informed that their gathering was illegal since the government had imposed Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which did not allow such public congregations.
However, some PTI members attacked the police “with an intention to kill them,” the document added, while others started pelting stones.
The former prime minister recently said the government had made more than 70 cases against him, with many of them now in different Pakistani courts.
Prior to the filing of new cases, top Punjab officials, including the chief minister, were nominated by the father of the PTI supporter, Ali Bilal, who lost his life on Wednesday.
In a written complaint filed at the Race Course Police Station, that his son was tortured before he was taken away by the police in a van.
“We were looking for him when we got information from the social media that the police had killed my son Ali Bilal and sent his body to the Services Hospital,” the document seen by Arab News said. “The reason was that my son was a PTI member and was participating in Imran Khan’s rally.”
The complaint urged the police to register a case against all suspects before bringing them to justice.
Ex-PM Khan’s nephew, Hassaan Niazi, who is providing legal representation to the bereaved family, said he would take the issue to court if the police did not register the case on the basis of the application filed by Bilal’s father.
