Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has accused the Shehbaz Sharif government in Islamabad and the Field Marshal Asim Munir-led army of institutional diktat, alleging gunpoint kidnappings and attempts to kidnap its leaders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), days before the party’s planned mega protest.
Now, PTI has alleged that two of its leaders — including Minister Fazal Shakoor Khan and former provincial minister Shakil Ahmad — have become the latest targets of authoritarian descent. Speaking during a provincial assembly discussion, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati alleged that Minister for Public Health Engineering Fazal Shakoor Khan was picked up from the middle of the road by masked men in Peshawar, while an attempt to kidnap Minister Shakeel Khan was foiled in Malakand.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati said it was a question mark on the performance of the ‘institutions’ that masked men were firing at and kidnapping people. He also accused the police of working as a ‘B-team’ of ‘agencies.’
However, other accounts in Pakistani media claimed the confrontation began after his guards allegedly resisted a police search and opened fire. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi said the party would announce its detailed protest plan on September 25 and mobilise workers across the country.
PTI said the men aimed gunfire directly at the tyres of the minister’s vehicle, forcing it to a stop, before forcing him out of the vehicle and taking him away to an undisclosed location. Simultaneously, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Law Aftab Alam Afridi said that local minister Shakeel Khan was also followed and attacked in Malakand. Despite the crackdown, PTI said it will go ahead with the planned protest. Addressing a press conference in Peshawar, Afridi said arrests of PTI provincial ministers and lawmakers had begun ahead of the protest, prompting an emergency meeting of the party’s parliamentary group. The Minister said the party had pursued “all constitutional and democratic avenues” but was being prevented from meeting Khan despite court orders.
