By Naveed Naqvi
ISLAMABAD: Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, former interior minister and a close ally of Imran Khan was arrested in the early hours of Thursday, officials said.
The police confirmed that the Awami Muslim League (AML) chief was arrested from Murree Motorway. However, Ahmed contradicted the police’s version and said that the authorities took him into custody along with his nephew, Sheikh Rashid Shafiq from his house in Rawalpindi.
Ahmed said he feared for his life. “My crime is that I’m standing with Imran Khan,” he said at the hospital in Islamabad, where he was taken for medical checkup. “I have been a minister 16 times. Never for a single time, I have ever been charged with corruption in these ministries.”
He alleged that at least “100 to 200 armed people” raided his residence. “They entered the house through ladders, broke the doors and windows of the house, and beat my servants.”
Ahmed also claimed that the police forcibly hustled him into their vehicle.
The police arrested him even though a court granted him bail and ordered the inspector-general of police to appear before the court on February 6, he added.
The former minister was shifted to the Secretariat police station after his medical checkup.
According to the details, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Rawalpindi Division President Raja Inayat Ur Rehman had filed a case against Ahmed in Islamabad’s Aabpara police station for causing a “permanent danger” to former president Asif Ali Zardari by alleging that PPP chief was hatching a plot to assassinate the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Khan.
The AML chief tried to “badmouth the former president” and cause a “permanent danger” to the PPP co-chairman and his family, the FIR said.
The FIR said the AML chief, with his provocatory allegations, wants to cause a fight between the PTI and the PPP and disrupt the country’s peace.
PTI’s Khan condemned the arrest and blamed the interim Punjab government — led by media mogul Moshin Naqvi — for being biased.
“Strongly condemn the arrest of Sh Rasheed. Never in our history have we had such a biased, vindictive Caretaker govt appt by totally discredited ECP. Question is can Pakistan afford a street movement which we are being pushed towards at a time when we have been bankrupted by Imported Govt?” Khan tweeted.
The PTI chairman had in January alleged that Zardari was hatching as well as financing an assassination plot against him for which the ex-president had hired “terrorists”.
“…there’s a Plan C. Asif Zardari is behind it. He has amassed a lot of money through corruption, and he has invested that money in terrorists and hired a militant organisation,” the PTI chief had alleged. However, the PPP strongly denied the claim and served a legal notice to Khan.
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