When PML-N extended a helping hand to PTI

A quiet village in Mandi Bahauddin found itself ablaze with whispers of a police raid on PTI workers and supporters after sunset. Farooq*, arrested a few days ago after he fell down, has emerged covered in mud, after a chase through the narrow village streets. 

For giving a chase, he was beaten up before being bundled up in a police van. “The police beat me up with sticks,” Farooq said.However, as the police van carrying two party workers sputtered towards the jail, the influential one was allowed to go home while the other one was thrown in the jail with several other PTI workers; all fearing what cases would they be fixed in by the morning.

Back in the village, the family of the young PTI supporter was on their toes to, initially, locate his exact location and, then, see who could help them get him released before being booked in a case. They knew who could help them but were reluctant to directly ask him because of the bitter rivalry.

A common relative was then approached to see if he could ask none other than an influential PML-N leader to help them out.Just minutes after the screen of the PML-N leader brightened up and he put the phone to his ear, he was calling his contacts to trace the young PTI worker’s exact location.

Soon, they found that and, without wasting a minute, they were on the way to get Farooq released. Using his contacts, they entered the prison and asked the officials concerned to locate the young man, which they did.

Read: PTI ‘needs to follow conciliatory path’

Before they could clear his name from files and head home, two other young men, who were arrested in a separate raid, recognized the PML-N leader and urged him to help them out as well as no one else was coming for them. After a few ifs and buts, all three were let go. Soon, they were reunited with their families.

However, as soon as Farooq reached home, the PTI workers came up with a narrative that he was released after PTI’s influential leader, who had alighted from the police van midway, approached a judge and sought his help to get him released from prison. The villagers then started choosing the story that suited them.

This could be one of the rarest occasions where PML-N came to PTI’s rescue amid an ongoing crackdown against PTI workers and supporters in the run-up to the general elections as the crackdown is still going on in different areas.

In one of the raids, several PTI workers and supporters, including a student of 9th grade, were arrested from Islamabad’s Ghauri Town area on February 6.The student whose father is a lawyer by profession and once served as a polling agent for a PML-N leader in Islamabad before deciding to stand with Imran Khan shared that he along with other lawyers and the PTI candidate in NA-48, Ali Bukhari, ran from pillar to post to get his son released, saying he finally succeeded at 2am on Tuesday night. “My son is so afraid that he isn’t even going in the street after what happened with him,” the lawyer Rana Abdul Qayyum said.

“He is just a 15-year-old boy; he has a whole life ahead of him; I don’t know how will he overcome the trauma.”“Can we still call these elections free, fair and transparent,” Qayyum questioned, regretting that political rivalry shouldn’t have reached this extent.

Though the political elite has been promising to end the politics of hatred and division, things would start unfolding once the elections are over, to say the least.