Senior Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Fawad Chaudhry has said that never ever in the country’s history have political opponents been implicated in the cases of terrorism on the basis of such baseless allegations which have been levelled against former prime minister and PTI Chairman Imran Khan, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Tuesday.

In an interview to the BBC, he said Imran had just said that his aide and the party leader Shahbaz Gill had been kidnapped and was subjected to torture. “But the lady magistrate, instead of ordering probe into allegations of torture, gave physical remand of Gill to the police,” he said, adding, “And Imran’s only sin was that he, in his speech at Islamabad’s F-9 Park, had said that he would file a case against the magistrate for not taking into account the torture factor.”

And on the basis of that statement, Fawad added, that a case of terrorism was filed against the PTI chairman which obviously had no basis. 

He said nobody should forget that thousands of PTI workers and supporters came out on streets a day before yesterday when they learnt that the government had planned to arrest Imran. “They even surrounded his Banigala residence in Islamabad in order to prevent the police from arresting him,” he said, adding, “This is because Imran is the country’s most popular leader; no other political leader is anywhere near to the stature of the PTI chairman.” 

PTI leader told the BBC that presently there was a puppet government in the country, which danced to the drumbeat of the ‘establishment’. “And this puppet government has no justification to remain in office anymore; neither legal nor moral,” he said emphatically.

Fawad, who also held a ministerial portfolio under the PTI government, made it clear that all the party wanted was free and fair general elections. “We want that people of Pakistan should be given the right to choose their elected representatives,” he emphasized. 

He regretted how unfortunate it was that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), had just 84 seats in the National Assembly (NA), while Imran-led PTI, which had 155 seats in the NA, had been made a minority party. “Will you believe that a minority is presently ruling Pakistan?” he questioned.  

Commenting on the pathetic state of economy, Fawad said the present government had broken the back of the country’s middle class. “The current rate of inflation is highest in the last 50 years,” he informed.

PTI leader warned of anarchy in the country if the government did not pay heed to the call for early elections.       

He told the BBC that the kind of language used in the cypher received from the US was insulting and demeaning. “No country can allow the use of such kind of language,” he said, and added, “For PTI, it is a very serious issue, and the party demands complete probe into it.” 

Fawad said that it was not only the PTI, other political parties too had had issues with the establishment, which certainly had a role in the country’s politics.