PM’s nephew: ‘No cabinet ministers’ intervened to prevent the PIC attack

Challenges police to put forth any evidence to establish that he had set fire to police van

LAHORE: Barrister Hassan Niazi, nephew of Prime Minister Imran Khan, succeeded in getting pre-arrest bail from the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC).

The ATC judge restrained the police from making his arrest after he was granted bail with direction to him to join the investigation.

Punjab police had been unable to arrest him in the wake of lawyers’ attack on Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) as a result of which three cardiac patients lost their lives.

Hassan Niazi paid a surprise visit to the ATC along with some lawyers and succeeded in obtaining bail-order claiming that the police had implicated him in a forged case to humiliate him.

48-hour ultimatum: Lawyers demand release of colleagues

Shortly after his bail, Hassan Niazi, in a press conference, claimed he made all-out efforts to involve provincial ministers through messages he had conveyed to the Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar to resolve the strife between lawyers and doctors, but his efforts bore no fruit.

He added that provincial ministers Raja Basharat and Dr. Yasmeen Rashid did not try to mitigate the crisis, though he had conveyed his messages to them through the chief minister.

“No one came forward to mediate between the lawyers and doctors as a result of which the situation turned worse at PIC.”

Niazi said he will present the entire report to his uncle, Prime Minister Imran Khan, but it was necessary for him to first remove the stigma that “his hands are soaked in blood”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2019.