All cases are fabricated: Sharjeel Memon

Reposing trust in courts, he hopes to win all cases

KARACHI: At a time when people are leaving the country fearing raids and action against them by the federal government and its agencies, former information minister Sharjeel Inam Memon has said that he has returned to Pakistan to face all the pending cases against him.

"All cases are fabricated,” he tells The Express Tribune. “They aim at victimising me and my party."

Sharjeel insists he is innocent. "People who are guilty always try to leave the country,” he says. “But I have come to face all the challenges because I am innocent."



Sharjeel, a vocal leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), who used to defend party policies on TV talk shows and various forums, said that graft cases were initiated against him and his name was put on the Exit Control List (ECL) without prior notice.

Sharjeel returned to the country on March 18 after spending two years in self-exile. According to him, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) are attempting to ‘appease’ Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar and other Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N) leaders by initiating cases against him.



"The victimisation can be gauged from the fact that they arrested me at Islamabad Airport even though I was on bail," he says, giving details of his arrest. According to him, people in plain clothes, who had come to arrest him, were harassing him. He adds that he would ‘prefer to die’ over changing his loyalty to his party. PPP is the representation of people at grass-roots level, he asserts.

Sharjeel has been suffering from spinal cord pain and has been admitted in a hospital in Karachi. He rebuts reports that he had left the country in 2015 fearing action against him. "I left the country on medical grounds," he says.



Reposing trust in the courts, he hopes to win all the cases. According to him, the PPP is still willing to give him important responsibilities but he has delayed taking them because of his poor health condition.

PPP will once again emerge as the major party of Sindh and those who are criticising it are living in a fool's paradise, he says. Criticising Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his recent visit to Jacobabad, he says, "People of Sindh want to know his earlier claims, which he never fulfilled," he says, adding that most of the PML-N leaders are leaving the party to join the PPP, realising that the latter alone can solve the people's problems.