LAHORE: Two Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leaders, Zubair Niazi and Ibad Farooq, have been charged with attacking a police van during the party’s court arrest drive in Lahore.
The case was registered at the Civil Lines police station following a complaint from Sub-Inspector Afzal Virk. The charges include terrorism, arson, and rioting.
The first information report (FIR) read Niazi and his colleagues had sat in the police van, while Farooq and 70 to 80 others attacked the van on Mall Road, breaking its windscreen. Farooq also threatened the driver and officials, and both accused fled the scene.
Hundreds of supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan on Wednesday defied a ban on rallies in the commercial heart of Lahore, taunting police and asking to be arrested en masse.
The protest is part of Khan’s latest campaign dubbed “fill the jail cells” with detainees — or “jail bharo” — as a way to pressure the administration into holding early elections.
But as the rally by the opposition party got under way in Lahore, police made no move to detain Khan’s supporters.
At that point, several protesters barged into a police van parked nearby, demanding they be taken into custody. Police officers at the scene insisted they were not going to arrest them.
— With AP
