Elahi attacks Imran’s close aides, believes Fawad’s earlier arrest ‘would be favourable’

Elahi attacks Imran’s close aides, believes Fawad’s earlier arrest ‘would be favourable’. Digging at former prime minister Imran Khan’s close aides, Pakistan Muslim League–Quaid (PML-Q) senior leader and ex-Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi — without naming Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senior Vice-President Fawad Chaudhry — said it would have been more “favourable” if he was arrested earlier.

Addressing an event in Lahore on Thursday, Elahi said: “Imran Khan’s close aides struck at the roots of the PTI. One out of four or five people, who are close to Khan, has been arrested. Things would have been better if he was arrested earlier.”

Expressing concerns over the recent actions taken by the Punjab caretaker chief minister, the former CM said that he tried his best to convince the PTI not to dissolve the assemblies but they [Khan] did not listen to him.

Read more: PML-Q removes Ch Shujaat Hussain as president

Highlighting his government’s achievements, Elahi claimed that he did five years of work in just a short span of five-and-half-months.

“I asked them [PTI] let me do the work. Now the [Punjab] assembly has been dissolved. See what is happening,” he added.

The PML-N’s politics would have been buried if they worked for one more year, he also claimed.

Terming Imran Khan the most popular leader of Pakistan, Elahi said that he was given the slot of chief minister by the grace of Allah and due to the trust of the PTI’s chief.

The former chief minister recalled that he had warned Khan that they [ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM)] would victimise them [PTI and PML-Q] if the assemblies were dissolved.

Speaking on the occasion, he also slammed caretaker CM Mohsin Raza Naqvi for allegedly victimising the political opponents.

“Will you not return home?” he asked.

“Do good deeds so that people remember you,” the PML-Q leader suggested to the interim provincial chief executive.

Fawad remanded to police custody

A day earlier, a district and sessions court in Islamabad approved a two-day physical remand of PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry in a sedition case.

The Islamabad Police had sought an eight-day physical remand of the PTI leader, however, the court did not approve their request and asked the authorities to present the PTI leader on January 27.

Following the order, the capital’s police shifted the former federal information minister to the Counter-Terrorism Department’s (CTD) complex in Sector H-11.

The police — during the time that the verdict was reserved — also took Fawad to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), where he underwent a medical checkup and was declared fit.

The former federal minister has vehemently denied all charges and demanded the case’s dismissal as it is “fraud and the FIR is a sham”.

Fawad’s lawyers told the court that the charges were politically motivated and since the PTI leader made the statements in Lahore, his case should have been registered in the city and not Islamabad.

The PTI leader was arrested from his Lahore residence in the wee hours of today after he publicly “threatened” the members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and their families in a media talk.