Sheikh Rashid accuses 'forces' of second raid at Islamabad home

Says men in 'plain clothes' roughed up his employees to record statements under duress

RAWALPINDI:

Awami Muslim League (AML) chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmad on Sunday accused elite forces of breaking and entering into his residence at midnight before beating up his house help and forcefully extracting statements from them.

Last week, Rashid had said that while he was out of the country, troops of the paramilitary force and Islamabad Police had broken into his house in Islamabad Sector F-7 in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

“I was not present in the house,” Rashid had tweeted hours later, claiming that a raid party of around 80 to 90 people broke down the door of his house.

In a video statement today, the AML leader reported another similar incident. He said that "at midnight, the elite forces broke into my Islamabad residence" and "tortured" his employees until they gave a statement dismissing that they had been beaten up.

He maintained that "the police is doing all this because of the June 9 notice issued by Additional Sessions Judge Tahir Abbas Supra".

"Forces dressed in white clothes indiscriminately tortured the house help at my mother's residence, the Lal Haveli, at 4am," he said adding that "it was the neighbours that intervened and saved them from the officials in plain clothes".

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He also said that the country is being governed under "the law of the jungle" where the citizens have been "disgraced and humiliated".

"I have the right to take legal action," he added, "the tides of time will turn".

Notably, the former interior minister had previously made an impassioned plea for justice to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial.

In a video message posted on Twitter last week, the PTI chairperson's close aide had said that his life was in danger with three men engaged to eliminate him.

Rashid had 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 ex-minister had said that if he had any information on the matter he would appear before the anti-graft watchdog as a witness.

Rashid had questioned how a common person would survive in this country when the state and politics will "stoop this low". He had appealed to CJP Bandial for justice claiming that "after the Almighty only the Supreme Court and the CJP were now the nation's hope".