By Staff Reporter
LAHORE: Four senior leaders of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have been sentenced to ten years in prison each by an anti-terrorism court in Lahore, while former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was acquitted on Saturday in the latest verdict to emerge from the country’s sweeping judicial reckoning over the May 9, 2023 riots.
Dr Yasmin Rashid, Omar Sarfraz Cheema, Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed and former senator Ejaz Chaudhry were convicted in a case linked to the burning of police vehicles in the Mughalpura area of Lahore during the unrest that convulsed Pakistan more than two years ago. Judge Manzar Ali Gill of ATC-I announced the verdict — which had been reserved on Thursday — from a makeshift courtroom established inside Kot Lakhpat Jail, where the accused are being held.
Qureshi, one of Pakistan’s senior political figures and a former foreign minister under Imran Khan’s government, was cleared of all charges. Eleven party workers were also acquitted. Of the 22 PTI leaders and workers originally nominated in the case, a further handful of workers were sentenced alongside the four senior leaders. Two accused had earlier been declared proclaimed offenders after allegedly evading arrest.
The prosecution, which had recorded statements from 37 witnesses before the case moved to final arguments, had alleged that the PTI leaders planned the May 9 incidents and incited workers to engage in riots and acts of violence.
The verdicts compound the mounting legal pressure on the party founded by Imran Khan, Pakistan’s only prime minister ever removed through a vote of no confidence. Rashid, Cheema, Rasheed and Chaudhry have now been convicted in multiple May 9 cases. As recently as December 2025, the same judge acquitted Qureshi while sentencing the same four leaders to ten years in a separate case concerning an attack on the entrance gate of Government Officers’ Residence-I at Club Chowk in Lahore.
Saturday’s judgment is the eighth May 9 verdict to be delivered so far. Previous rulings have covered an attack on Shadman police station, violence at Sherpao Bridge, the burning of police vehicles near Rahat Bakery, and the torching of a Supreme Court judge’s escort vehicle near Jinnah House.
The May 9 riots erupted after Khan was taken into custody from the premises of the Islamabad High Court by the National Accountability Bureau in connection with the Al-Qadir Trust corruption case. What followed was a wave of violence unprecedented in Pakistan’s turbulent political history: supporters stormed and ransacked military installations and government buildings across the country, targeting the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi and the Lahore Corps Commander’s residence. The assault on that residence, known as Jinnah House, became one of the most symbolically charged events of the crisis.
Thousands of PTI supporters, workers and leaders were subsequently arrested. Many were later released on bail, but a significant number remain imprisoned. Khan himself continues to fight legal battles from behind bars, having been convicted in a series of cases that he and his party maintain are politically motivated — a charge the government denies.
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