India scheming to keep Sharifs in power: Qadri

Next phase of PAT Qisas Tehreek from August 28

LAHORE: India will protect the rule of the Sharif brothers because in the first place it was New Delhi that manoeuvred to get them into power, alleged Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Allama Tahirul Qadri on Saturday while branding the ruling family a security risk for Pakistan.

“Whenever the rule of the Sharif family is in danger, we see an upsurge in terrorist attacks in the country. This should be investigated,” Qadri told his supporters in 105 cities through video link from his Model Town home.



Qadri’s party has been leading a Tehreek-e-Qisas-o-Ehtesab (Retribution and Accountability Movement) to seek justice for the killing of 14 party workers in a police action on the party’s headquarters in Model Town in 2014.

“When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rakes up Balochistan, why does our Prime Minister [Nawaz Sharif] not respond? When [RAW agent] Kulbushan Jadhav had been arrested why did our prime minister not say a word about it?” asked Qadri. Submitting the answer himself, Qadri said: “This is because India got him into power.”

In a desperate attempt to counter Pakistan’s diplomacy on disputed  territory of Kashmir, Modi in his August 15 Independence Day speech accused Pakistan of rights abuses in Balochistan, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. Kulbushan, a serving officer of Indian Navy who was arrested in March, has confessed that RAW is stoking terrorism in Pakistan.

Qadri claimed that some foreign states had ganged up to manoeuvre and get the Sharif brothers to win the 2013 general elections. “India is still fighting to keep the Sharifs in power. If the Sharifs deny this, then I will reveal the names of the countries that helped them come into power,” he added.

Qadri said his information was credible and authentic – and if the intelligence agencies refuted his information, then he would correct himself.

The populist cleric also reprimanded Mehmood Khan Achakzai, whose Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party is a key ally of Nawaz Sharif, for criticising the intelligence agencies of Pakistan in a speech in the National Assembly. “Nawaz Sharif never bothered to respond to criticism of the agencies.”

Brandishing the copy of a purported letter from the director general of NADRA in Balochistan, the PAT chief said the PML-N’s ally in the province were stopping the authority from cancelling fake Pakistani national identity cards obtained by foreign spies.

“If general elections are held in 2018, Pakistan will become a ‘Sharifs’ State’. The whole country will become Balochistan. They have bought the whole system. Even if the Quaid-i-Azam contests against the Sharifs in this system, he cannot win a union council election,” Qadri said.

Qadri announced that he would personally lead the second phase of his movement from August 28. “Today I didn’t participate in the protest because I wanted to send across a message that my workers are organised enough to avenge the 14 martyrs of Model Town in seven days, but we will never take the law into our own hands.”

He said that if army chief General Raheel Sharif intervened to get an FIR registered, the heirs of the Model Town victims would get justice. “We want Qisas (retribution) which means we want the Sharif brother hanged for the killing of our 14 workers,” he said.



It has been 17 months since the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism was announced, he said. The army has done what it was supposed to do, while the civilian government has failed to implement other points of NAP. “There are nurseries of terrorism in Punjab. Punjab is the father of terrorism in Waziristan. This is where ideological terrorism is protected and promoted,” Qadri claimed.

He said Nawaz Sharif had been disqualified from the 2013 elections for concealing his assets. “All his assets revealed in the Panama Papers did exist in 2013. He didn’t declare them in the assembly either; therefore he should be disqualified.”

The PAT chief said his party’s protest would continue in Gujranwala on Sunday, followed by others in Dera Ghazi Khan and Rawalpindi divisions. “In the next phase I will reveal my future strategy,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st, 2016.