Daily Times

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has made the decision to file a petition with the Supreme Court in order to have the three suspects listed by Imran Khan, the party’s leader, added to the FIR about the murderous gun attack on the former prime minister.

PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi filed a petition in the Supreme Court’s (SC) Lahore Registry for the registration of a first information report (FIR) against the gun attack on the party chief Imran Khan in Wazirabad.

The petition was submitted to SC’s Deputy Registrar Aijaz Goraya. The plea was filed after the Punjab Police did not register the FIR against the people Khan wanted to nominate.

On November 3 in Punjab’s Wazirabad district, the former cricketer-turned-politician was attacked while participating in his “Haqeeqi Azadi March,” but a FIR was not filed as the complainant had hoped.

The party will file a plea with the top court’s registries in each province to have the three suspects who the PTI president believes were responsible for the attack added to the FIR. On Monday, the PTI members are have to submit a writ petition with the Supreme Court (today).

Along with a group of attorneys, the PTI MNAs from Islamabad will appear before the Supreme Court. Similar writ petitions will be submitted in each province’s registry of the highest court. The party’s MNAs in all provinces have been instructed to reach the SC registries in their respective areas.

The leadership of the party has instructed its MNAs to guarantee their attendance at the SC and its registries. This development has been confirmed by Musarrat Jamshed Cheema, a spokesperson for the Punjab administration.

Musarrat added that the SC would be requested to register an FIR of the attack on the PTI chief, the leader of the country’s “largest party”, as per his wishes. Even after the passage of a week, the FIR was not being registered in accordance with the PTI chief’s version, she lamented.

“At this time, the people’s trust in the law and institutions is decreasing. We demand that there should be a transparent investigation into the murderous attack on the PTI chairman,” she added.

Earlier this month, a relative of the PTI chairman had moved an application to register an FIR against Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Major General Faisal Naseer, the three suspects named by Imran behind the botched assassination attempt on his life.

The three high officials mentioned by the PTI chairman, however, have not been named in the case, and the FIR was only filed in response to a sub-inspector police officer’s complaint. Asad Umar, the head of the PTI and a former federal minister, and Aslam Iqbal, a provincial minister and fellow party member, released a video message shortly after the incident.

In the statement, Umar said that they both spoke with Imran after the attack and that the PTI leader had knowledge of it beforehand. The prime minister, interior minister, and a senior military officer, according to the former minister, were the ones who had plotted the attack.

He demanded that these three men should be ousted from their posts. “We are waiting for Imran Khan’s nod. If these three people aren’t removed from their positions, there will be countrywide protests,” he warned Umar said he had spoken with the doctors treating Imran and his condition was stable.

He added that as the PTI chief had suffered bullet wounds to his leg, there could be two or three pellets lodged inside his body, especially the bone.

However, he said the doctors had carried out CT scans of Imran’s leg and said he was out of danger.
One person had died in the attack, while several members of the PTI chairman’s close circle, including Senator Faisal Javed, former Sindh governor Imran Ismail, Ahmad Chattha and Imran Yousaf, were injured.

Regional police chief Akhtar Abbas told Reuters a criminal investigation had been launched, without elaborating. A copy of the police report lodged by Wazirabad police and seen by Reuters said a man in the crowd near Imran had taken out a pistol and started shooting, wounding the former premier and 10 other people, one of whom later died.

According to the police, the alleged shooter was overcome by PTI supporter Ibtesam Hasan, who may have prevented the former premier from suffering more serious gunshot wounds. In a number of interviews with local media, Hasan said that the shooter he had confronted was the one the police had detained.

Imran, who claimed that two gunmen had attempted to kill him, and his aides have stated that they would not accept the police case unless it named the suspects that he had mentioned.