Pakistan police and security officials in plain clothes on Thursday reportedly raided the central secretariat of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, preventing members from entering the premises.
The raid came just before a general body meeting of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf: party on Wednesday in Islamabad’s Sector G-8. It happened a day after Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were sentenced to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment each in a corruption case, Dawn News reported quoting unnamed party sources.
Khan’s party has been stripped of its traditional electoral symbol, a cricket bat, on technical grounds, and its candidates are contesting the election as independents. Raising a “big question mark” on the fairness of polls this month, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has lamented that said that their candidates and public gatherings were being targeted by “terrorist attacks.”
On Wednesday, an independent candidate associated with Khan’s PTI was fatally shot in northwest Pakistan. The shooting happened in the Siddiqabad area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district. Rehan Zeb Khan was campaigning in the area when armed men opened fire on his vehicle, the Dawn newspaper reported. He was taken to a district hospital where he succumbed to his wounds.
This came just eight days ahead of the February 8 general elections, where the PTI is participating amidst a state crackdown and without an electoral symbol. On Tuesday, in another case, a Pak court sentenced the embattled PTI leader to 10 years for leaking state secrets.
In August, Khan was also handed a three-year prison sentence by another court for selling gifts worth more than 140 million Pakistani rupees in state possession and received during his time in office. The sentence was later suspended but Khan remains behind bars in connection with other cases. He has said that he legally purchased the items.
Comments
0 comment