JIT report points to plot to assassinate Imran: Fawad

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) constituted to probe the assassination attempt on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan found that there was a planned attempt to assassinate the former prime minister in the Wazirabad attack on November 3, senior PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry claimed on Wednesday.

Sharing the findings of the JIT, Chaudhry, the senior vice president of the PTI, said that by reducing the number of police personnel in Gujarat, an opportunity was provided for the attack and subsequently an assassination attempt was made at the Imran Khan.

“The revelations made in the JIT report will be made public soon, Chaudhry said, while speaking to the media. “A well-thought-out narrative was chalked out to give the assassination attempt the cover of religiously-motivated crime,” he added.

Chaudhry accused the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leaders including Javed Latif, Maryam Aurangzeb, Rana Sanaullah and Khawaja Asif, of being part of the plot, pointing out that these ministers had accused Imran of blasphemy in their separate press conferences.

Chaudhry claimed that there was plot to kill the prime suspect in the shooting case, Naveed Mehr. “The initial findings revealed that three assassins were present at the crime scene, 14 shells were recovered on the ground and nine shells were recovered from a building, and one suspect assailant [Naveed] was arrested. The police were in search of two other attackers,” he added.

According to Chaudhry, the report also cleared the misleading information; no bullets were fired from the guns of Imran’s security guards after their weapons were forensically tested and the 14 shells found at the crime scene were fired from three different weapons.

He also raised suspicion over the release of a confessional video of the suspected attacker Naveed before the PTI chief had reached the hospital after the attack, which was tweeted by journalists.

“Moreover, the DPO Gujarat gave a camera to an SHO to record the confession of the attacker. In this connection, the DPO was summoned for the investigation but he did not turn up; [so] who stopped him from recording his statement on the matter,” he questioned.

Fawad Chaudhry further said that it had been confirmed that a bullet that hit Moazzam [a PTI supporter who was killed on the day of the attack] came from the gun of a second shooter and was intended for Naveed.

Talking about the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), he said, “Who was stopping them from presenting the records and other documents to the investigators. The federal agencies refused to provide the IP addresses used by accused Naveed,” he added.