Wanted for stealing ballot boxes: PTI minister Ali Amin Gandapur surrenders to police

Police have opted against holding Gandapur at Saddar police station

PESHAWAR: Nearly three hours after his ‘escape’, Dera Ismail Khan DPO Sadiq Baloch confirmed that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MPA and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Minister Ali Amin Gandapur had been arrested.

"He handed himself to the police," DPO Baloch said.

Following his arrest, the MPA was shifted to a safer location. The DPO suggested that the minister could not be kept in the Saddar police station since it was a stronghold of the PTI leader and his followers.

Earlier in the evening, the K-P revenue minister's house was surrounded by police.

A cordon was set up by the DI Khan DPO himself, but the minister reportedly fled using a backdoor, reported Express News correspondent Ramzan Semaab.

According to the DPO, they had made all efforts to arrest the minister by deploying personnel outside his house. “Gandapur had asked for 30 minutes to prepare himself for the arrest”, he claimed.

But the minister failed to show.

Meanwhile, K-P Chief Minister Pervez Khattak reportedly contacted Gandapur, urging him to obey the law and to surrender.

According to the DI Khan police, vote count was under way in Hemath Adda polling station on Sunday when PTI lawmaker Ali Amin Gandapur accompanied by his brother Umar Amin Gandapur, a candidate for tehsil nazim, and his armed supporters arrived, picked up the ballot boxes and began putting them in the minister’s car.

antt SHO Saifur Rehman who was on duty at the station attempted to stop the minister and his accomplices from entering the station with the help of his police staff, but failed, said a local who witnessed the incident.

Soon after, a large number of workers of opposition parties’ candidates gathered in the area and surrounded Ali’s car. They pelted it with stones and sticks and slashed its tyres. The minister, who was inside the car, remained unhurt.

Officials of the district government, the DPO and DC arrived at the scene subsequently and negotiated with the activists to disperse them; the minister then drove away.

Cantt SHO has registered an FIR in Saddar police station against Ali, his brother Umar and their security guards under various sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, including assaulting a public servant to deter him from his duties.