PTI leadership continues to evade arrests

Despite registration of 18 cases, police fail to arrest elusive party leaders

RAWALPINDI:

Since the arrest of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former premier Imran Khan, the Rawalpindi police have registered 18 cases against violent protests in different police stations of the garrison city.

Although the district administration has issued orders to detain active PTI leaders under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order, 1960, the Rawalpindi police could not arrest any PTI leader except former Punjab information minister Fayyazul Hassan Chohan.

A senior Rawalpindi police officer, while talking to The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity, said that all the top PTI leaders were nominated in different cases registered in the garrison city and efforts were also made to arrest them but all of them went missing to avoid arrest.

The officer further said that on Monday evening, former Punjab information minister Fayyazul Hassan Chohan appeared near the Rawalpindi Press Club and was immediately detained by the city police.

The police officer also informed this scribe that two raids have been conducted in Lal Haveli to arrest former federal interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and former PTI MNA Sheikh Rashid Shafiq, but none of them could be taken into custody.

He said raids were also being conducted to arrest former Punjab Assembly deputy speaker Wasiq Qayyum Abbasi, former provincial minister Raja Rashid Hafeez, former federal minister Aamir Kayani, former federal aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan, former Punjab Food Authority chairman Omar Tanveer Butt, former PHA chairman Asif Mehmood, former MNAs Sadaqat Abbasi and Amar Siddique Khan, former MPAs Chaudhry Muhammad Adnan and Ejaz Khan Jazzi and former provincial law minister Raja Basharat but so far the police have not succeeded in arresting any of these PTI leaders.

The Rawalpindi police are taking help from mobile technology and human intelligence to arrest the PTI leaders and wherever the information about the presence of any PTI leader is received, an immediate raiding party is dispatched, he explained.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2023.