I didn’t know Imran Khan was so sick. In his bail application to the Islamabad High Court, he said he had piles and had suffered a rectal prolapse. The latter usually happens to women, according to the Internet, and old people. But as we all know, Imran is a young man, and particularly appeals to the youth vote. That prolapse is pretty bad. It can lead to rectal incontinence. So if there’s a sudden brown stain, and an unmistakable smell, well, the court should have given him bail.
I’m a little confused. Imran has been sitting around only recently, so why would he have developed piles. Well, piles might be fashionable in PTI circles, but they are not the reason why Shah Mehmood Qureshi made bail.
As a matter of fact, the rectal prolapse path isn’t the one you should be taking. That can easily be examined. On the other hand, backache is a much better option. No examination, no diagnostic test available, can say you don’t have a backache. If the patient claims he’s got it, he’s got it. The doctor might identify the reason: spinal misalignment, a torn muscle, whatever. Or he might not. The judge might be as disbelieving as he wants, but he can’t reject the claim. He may allow the accused appearance lying on a stretcher, but he can’t deny the claim. Imran can make the claim better than most other people, as he suffered a stress fracture of the back, back in 1983, from pounding in the ball for the long spells in the 1982-3 series against India that got him 40 wickets. Or does Imran have any special reason for not wanting to admit to backache?
It will be interesting to see how Imran balances appearances at campaign rallies with his claim that his wounds prevent him from appearing in court. Of course, there’s been one angry video claiming the piles and prolapse claims are propaganda. After all, they don’t fit in with Imran’s image of an all-conquering hero.
It wasn’t a campaign rally, but a rally to express solidarity with the judiciary, which ended badly for one PTI supporter, who ended up dead. What were the torture marks on him, who inflicted them, is being disputed, but no one has denied that he was killed. The PTI claims that he was killed in police custody; the police merely shuffles its feet and gets embarrassed.
That he was killed in police custody is possible. But it hasn’t happened for some time. The PTI supporters need to man up, for they could end up in police custody these days. Who said being part of a human shield was going to be easy?
Somebody should ask Ch Parvez Elahi if it’s easy. After all, he is now the PTI’s President. The great actor, Qawi Khan, passed away in Canada first, but the delay was not because of him. It should be remembered that Qawi, who played so many memorable roles in all formats, went a little offbeat when he played a policeman in Andhera Ujala. It is with such cops that Ch Pervez may have to deal with, now that Muhammad Khan Bhatti, his fixer, is singing like a canary, and who is said to have recorded a confessional statement under Section 164 CrPC, which implies that the statement is before a magistrate, who has assured himself that there is no police pressure. I seem to hear a shadowy police spokesman saying that only the Army has claimed noninterference. The police are there to provide service as before.
I was interested to see that Pakistan has got billions of dollars stuck in foreign aid. We shouldn’t expect much money from the World Bank. Not with its Chief Economist an Indian, Indirect Singh Gill. He went to St Stephen’s College, New Delhi, before doing his doctorate fro the University of Chicago. And then there’s Gia Gopinath, the Calcuta-born Harvard PhD who’s DMD of the IMF after having been its Chief Economist. No wonder they haven’t been releasing their tranche!
I know these Indians are probably ‘coconuts’ (White on the inside), but does anyone remember the trouble we had with FATF? The sheer persistence with which India tried to get Pakistan kept on the gey list, or better yet, blacklisted, says that if need be, RAW will kidnap Gill’s and Gopinath’s relatives, and threaten to torture them unless Pakistan is not given any money.
