Rana says PTI chief ‘faking’ Gill’s torture to divert public; Denies accusations
PTI Chairman Imran Khan was booked under Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (punishment for acts of terrorism) regarding his comments at his Islamabad rally a day ago, it emerged on Sunday.
The first information report (FIR) was registered at Islamabad’s Margalla police station on Saturday under the complaint of magistrate Ali Javed.
The FIR said that at the PTI’s rally at F-9 park a day ago, Imran had “terrorised and threatened top police officials and a respected female additional sessions judge” in his address. The FIR reproduced the PTI chairman’s comments where he spoke about the female judge and the Islamabad police officials.
In his address on Saturday, Imran had threatened to file cases against Islamabad’s inspector general of police and deputy inspector general of police and said: “We won’t spare you.”
The former premier had also taken exception to Additional District and Sessions Judge Zeba Chaudhry, who had approved Gill’s two-day physical remand at the request of the capital police, and said she should “prepare herself as action would be taken against her”.
The FIR argued that Imran’s speech was meant to “terrorise” top police officials and the judiciary so they could not perform their functions and abstain from pursuing any action against any PTI-related individual if required to do so.
Earlier, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah termed the allegations against the government of the custodial torture of Imran Khan’s chief of staff Shahbaz Gill a “drama which is nothing but a lie” with the aim to draw attention away from the party’s “anti-state” narrative.
“I can confirm as the interior minister that no torture was carried out against Gill,” said Sanaullah while addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Sunday
Referring to Gill’s statement that landed him in jail on charges of sedition, Sanaullah said that the PTI leader had “everything planned with the private television channel, from when they will call him, to how long the conversation will run”.
“Shahbaz played a fixed match. They planned that he has to speak for 14 minutes uninterruptedly in response to the questions asked during the programme. “What Shahbaz said is Imran’s narrative. There is no doubt that it is a foreign agenda,” he said.
The interior minister denounced Khan’s remarks from the night prior, when he addressed a rally and spoke at length against the police and judiciary, saying that “Imran Niazi’s narrative is an anti-state agenda”.
Speaking of the divisive social media trends that were launched in the wake of the Lasbela helicopter tragedy in which six army personnel were martyred, Sanaullah alleged that it was an “organised campaign” which had the “support of Imran Khan”.
The minister said that many politicians had “spoken in the past about the interference of the establishment, but no one ever provoked anyone to stop obeying the orders of the command”.
“Such a heinous conspiracy will neither be tolerated by the state, nor forgiven,” he said.
The federal minister said that he is waiting for Imran Khan to go on a long march upon which “a more effective response than that on May 25 will be given”.
Implying a low turnout in yesterday’s rally, Sanaullah said:
