ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said on Saturday it would file a contempt case against top Punjab police officials after they raided the residence of its leader in the eastern Lahore city to clear a “no-go area” around it and claimed to have seized inflammable material.
Khan’s residence recently became the site of clashes between the police and his supporters after an Islamabad district and sessions court issued non-bailable arrest warrants against him in a case involving the sale of state gifts.
The Lahore High Court instructed the police to stand down after two days of intense clashes, as PTI leaders said Khan would assure his presence in the district court on March 18. The Islamabad High Court also suspended the arrest warrants after hearing a PTI petition.
However, police decided to remove encroachments and a blockade created by Khan’s supporters on Saturday and were resisted in the process. According to a senior police officer, Suhail Sukhera, the operation intensified after a man on the roof of Khan’s residence opened fire.
The police broke open the main door of the former prime minister’s residence where they said “illegal structures” had been erected to shelter those who had been involved in attacks on law enforcement personnel. The raid came at a time when Khan was on his way to Islamabad to appear before the district court.
“Police entered Imran Khan’s house today by breaking a gate and tortured the employees there,” Chaudhary Fawad Hussain, a close Khan aide, said during a press briefing. “Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi was alone in the house along with the employees when the operation was carried out. This was a violation of privacy.”
Hussain said that ex-PM, following the orders of the court, was on his way to Islamabad for the hearing when the police made “a mockery of the high court’s decision.”
“We will file a contempt of court case against Punjab’s inspector-general (IG) of police for violating the court order,” he said, adding that the top police official was launched the raid on the behest of the government.
Earlier in the day, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that the operation to clear the “no-go area” was carried out by Punjab’s caretaker government and the police in view of the “violent situation there.”
“All the terrorists present there had been arrested, and a case has been filed against them,” Sanaullah told Pakistan’s Geo News channel.
“A case will be registered against some people today too. The arms, petrol bombs, bomb-making equipment, and other things have been recovered from there, and you will see it in a bit. So, Imran Khan, and some senior journalists who had been managing the matter, a case will be filed against them and against the violent people arrested from there.”
Sanaullah said there was no example of such opposition to the law in the past and any group resorting to such tactics was not a political party.
Khan questioned the legality of the raid and described it as part of a deeper conspiracy.
“Punjab police have led an assault on my house in Zaman Park where Bushra Begum is alone,” he said on Twitter.
