Imran Khan, the chairman of PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) supporter have barricaded their leader’s home on Friday to defend him as the former Pakistani prime minister waited to hear a judgment on whether police forces could launch an operation to arrest him for failing to show up in court.
Ahead of the court decision, an anxious peace stayed in Khan’s Lahore neighborhood which earlier this week was the stage of pitched wars between hundreds of supporters and protection forces that had attempted to move the former Prime Minister to hear a hearing in a case in which he is accused of selling state gifts presented to him while he was prime minister. While Khan denies the charges.
On Friday there was no force presence, witnesses said Khan’s supporters, armed with bars and iron rods, remained stationed outside his home. Former PM’s associate Fawad Chaudhry said PTI had filed another appeal on Friday at the Islamabad High Court to suspend the warrant after a lower court denied a similar petition a day earlier.
Our supporters are outside Imran Khan’s house, but I don’t think matters will become extreme.”
Fawad Chaudhry added.
Police are waiting for the court order on the warrant before taking any step, the provincial government’s information minister Amir Mir said. The brutality on Tuesday and Wednesday, in which protesters threw petrol bombs and security forces used tear gas and water cannon, had increased worries of a new political stand-off in nuclear-armed Pakistan, which is already grappling with an economic crisis.
The arrest warrant was issued by a court in Islamabad when Imran Khan failed to appear before it over accusations that he unlawfully sold state gifts presented to him by foreign dignitaries when he was prime minister from 2018 to 2022. The Election Commission of Pakistan found him guilty and barred Khan from holding public office for one parliamentary term.
Khan has said he was willing to submit a written undertaking that he would willingly appear before the court on Saturday, but the court said such an undertaking was insufficient. It was clouded whether the court hearing on Friday would consider this undertaking.
The legal proceedings against PTI’s chairman started after he was dismissed from office in a parliamentary vote early last year. Since then, he has been urging a snap election and maintaining nationwide protests and was shot and injured in one of those protests. Current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has denied Khan’s demands, saying an election would be held as scheduled later this year.
