Rashid appeals to CJP after 'raid' at Islamabad home, says 'life in danger'
Former interior minister Sheikh Rashid made an impassioned plea for justice on Wednesday to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial.
In a video message posted on Twitter shortly after accusing Rangers of raiding his house along with the Islamabad Police, former prime minister Imran Khan's close aide said that his life was in danger with three men engaged to eliminate him.
Rashid reiterated that he had nothing to do with the Al-Qadir Trust case and had never associated with former advisor to prime minister on accountability Shahzad Akbar in this regard. The former interior minister said that if he had any information on the matter he would appear before the anti-graft watchdog as a witness.
Rashid questioned how a common person would survive in this country when the state and politics will "stoop this low". He appealed to CJP Bandial for justice claiming that "after the Almighty only the Supreme Court and the CJP were now the nation's hope".
Read Sheikh Rashid dissociates himself from Al-Qadir Trust case
He added that he was not in the country and returned only early this morning.
According to Rashid, troops of the paramilitary force and Islamabad Police broke into his house in Islamabad Sector F-7 in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
“I was not present in the house,” tweeted Rasheed hours later, claiming that a raid party of around 80 to 90 people broke down the door of his house.
— Sheikh Rashid Ahmed (@ShkhRasheed) May 31, 2023
They beat up the house help and broke their arms, said the former minister, adding that the raid party took away two vehicles parked in the premises, licensed weapons and footage from the CCTV cameras installed in the vicinity. The former minister claimed that the Pakistan Rangers and police were accompanied by 20 to 22 men in plainclothes.
Rashid, who is also the chief of Awami Muslim League, has been evading arrest since the state’s crackdown on PTI’s senior leadership began earlier this month shortly after Imran’s arrest in connection with the Al-Qadir Trust case and subsequent release on court orders.
Rashid was among three senior leaders of the former premier’s cabinet who were summoned by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on May 30, a day earlier, for their alleged involvement in the Al-Qadir graft case. Besides Rashid, former information minister Fawad Chaudhry and former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister Pervez Khattak, were issued call up notices by the anti-graft body for their alleged collusion in an illegal settlement and money laundering of around £190 million recovered from a property tycoon by the United Kingdom.
Posting his reply to NAB on Twitter, Rasheed distanced himself from the case, claiming he was absent from the cabinet meeting where the matter of the Al-Qadir Trust was taken up and had no information or evidence on the subject.
— Sheikh Rashid Ahmed (@ShkhRasheed) May 30, 2023