ISLAMABAD: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will deploy its security forces to protect from police brutality participants of the coming protest march of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Chief Minister Mahmood Khan said.
“When [party chairman] Imran Khan again gives a call [for the march on Islamabad], I am telling you I will use Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s force,” he warned at a lawyer’s convention in Peshawar on Monday.
But Mahmood did not elaborate on what he meant by “force”.
During the party’s previous march on the capital on May 25, the police in Punjab fired teargas, baton-charged and detained supporters of the former prime minister to stop them from reaching Islamabad to demand fresh elections, witnesses said.
Clashes between Khan’s supporters and activists and police were reported in multiple cities, including Lahore.
The treatment meted out to former Punjab health minister Dr. Yasmin Rashid invited particularly strong uproar and criticism. Footage showed police stopping Rashid’s vehicle in Lahore. An exchange of words could also be seen after police attempted to yank out the key of the vehicle she was travelling in.
A video aired by broadcasters showed police landing blows on her vehicle as it tried to pass through a cordon at Bati Chowk neighbourhood in old Lahore. A non-uniformed individual with his face covered could also be seen in the footage, hitting the vehicle forcefully.
Live TV footage showed police fighting with Khan’s supporters, beating them and in some places breaking their vehicles’ windscreens and bundling them into police vans.
In recent speeches, Khan has warned his party would devise a “better plan” in the next iteration of the march. He has also said he called off the march to avert bloodshed, and more recently, in an interview, said some of his protesters were “also armed” and could have used the force against law enforcement personnel.
“Those of our people who have been injured [in police clashes], we are going to the court against this ‘imported government’,” Mahmood told the gathering.
He said a meeting had been held with the party’s legal wing and both he and Khan had conveyed to them to prepare documents to register a case against Minister for Interior Rana Sanaullah Khan under Section 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
“We will not spare him,” he said.
The chief minister also said he had consulted his legal team and vowed to “avenge what the imported and incompetent government [in the Centre] had done with Khyber Pakthunkhwa and its people”. He did not elaborate further on what he was referring to.
