LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: Barely a day after former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested from the court, top leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party, including deputy chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi and secretary general Asad Umar, were taken into custody on Tuesday.
While Qureshi was arrested on unspecified charges, Umar was seized apparently by the counter-terrorism department (CTD) of the police from the premises of the high court of the capital, in a manner similar to Khan’s arrest.
Prior to his arrest, Umar, along with several other leaders of the party, was working with Khan’s legal team to prepare a petition for submission to the IHC to seek a meeting with the former prime minister.
Reports suggest Umar had been charged in two cases for the damages to public property caused by the protests that broke out after Khan’s arrest. However, his lawyer Faisal Chaudhry said it was still unclear under which case the former planning minister had been arrested.
Responding to the event, Shireen Mazari, his colleague, said the high court in Islamabad had become a “fertile ground to illegally arrest PTI leaders.”
“Fascism confirmed. They can’t get the terrorists but PTI leaders are now terrorists [sic] for [a] cabal of crooks [and] the state? This is despicable,” the former rights minister tweeted, referring to the government of Shehbaz Sharif who himself is facing a plethora of corruption investigations.
Earlier, Omar Sarfraz Cheema, a former governor of Punjab and member of the opposition party, was taken into custody in the early hours of Wednesday by men in plain clothes from his residence in Lahore, his family said.
The reports in the press, however, suggest he was arrested by the anti-corruption bureau of Punjab for alleged misuse of power during his time in office.
Cheema’s arrest comes after a case was registered against Cheema at the Ghakhar police station in Gujranwala a week earlier.
In the complaint, a woman claimed that several individuals tried to abduct her at the behest of Cheema. She also alleged that these individuals destroyed her crops.
The anti-corruption bureau has not provided any further details on the charges against Cheema, and it is unclear whether the two cases are related. The party has not yet commented on the matter.
Meanwhile, former Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MPA Mian Akram Usman has also been arrested in Lahore on Wednesday.
He was arrested along with his brother Haroon Akbar on the charge of violent protests in Lahore following the arrest of PTI Chairman Imran Khan.
