Daily Times

PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry Saturday announced that the party would be approaching Lahore High Court to ask for a judicial commission to be constituted for conducting an independent investigation of the case. Addressing a press conference, Fawad recalled that Bilal was a “special child” who had been affiliated with Imran Khan since 1992 when he was part of a fund-gathering drive for Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust. He added that when PTI was formed, Bilal was a “part of the PTI’s body and life”. The PTI leader also had pictures from the post-mortem printed with him. Fawad said the marks on injuries were clearly on Bilal’s hands and wrists, which he said were places where he would have been hit while protecting himself from sticks by raising his arm.

He also said the cases of custodial torture would not be occurring in Pakistan today had the courts taken notice of the alleged custodial torture of PTI leader Shahbaz Gill. PTI leader Yasmin Rashid emphasised the findings of the post-mortem report to insist that Bilal was tortured. “The biggest thing is that they have abused his sensitive organs. Let me tell you that it can also cause a cardiogenic shock as it is a very sensitive area and there are many pain impulses,” she said. Former human rights minister Shireen Mazari tweeted: “Your job is to conduct elections within 90 days and return home but you are busy digging the graves of law and democracy by [committing] the worst violations of constitutional rights in the province on the instructions of your guardians.”

“Remember that the nation will take full account from you of the innocent Zille Shah’s murder along with every incident of insolence and violation of the Constitution,” she said in an indirect reference to the chief minister. In a separate tweet, Mazari shared a video clip of the press conference where Naqvi is talking about the government’s plan related to arrests. “Mohsin Naqvi admits he had a plan to arrest workers regardless. He is proving to be quite the criminal like his masters,” Mazari said. PTI leader Hammad Azhar asserted that Bilal’s “post-mortem report and the case registered by the police against Imran Khan and his allies for murder allegations was the biggest evidence of the caretaker chief minister’s lie”. He termed the sequence of events presented by Naqvi “an attempt for a third cover-up”.