The arrest comes in the wake of the shutdown last evening of satellite broadcaster ARY News after it aired remarks by Gill seen by the authorities as inciting mutiny in the armed forces.
By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A close aide of former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested on Tuesday after pulling a private TV channel off air for airing his interview considered as seditious and threatening to national security.
The police arrested PTI Khan’s chief of staff Shehbaz Gill for sedition and inciting the public against state institutions.
The arrest comes in the wake of the shutdown last evening of satellite broadcaster ARY News after it aired remarks by Gill seen by the authorities as inciting mutiny in the armed forces.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah confirmed that Gill was arrested by the Islamabad police on charges of sedition and inciting the public against the state institutions.
“He will be presented before a court tomorrow… a first information report (FIR) had been registered against the PTI leader on behalf of the state,” the minister told a news conference.
The case against Gill was registered on a complaint of a government magistrate Ghulam Murtaza Chandio. Gill is booked under sections 34 (common intention), 109 (abetment), 120 (concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment), 121 (waging war against state), 124-A (sedition), 131 (abetting mutiny, or attempt to seduce a soldier, sailor or airman from his duty), 153 (provoking to cause riot), 505 (statement conducing to public mischief) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
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PTI chief Khan tweeted that Gill’s arrest was an “abduction, not an arrest”. “Can such shameful acts take place in any democracy? Political workers treated as enemies.”
Gill, the minister claimed, had been arrested according to the law and through a proper procedure.
He alleged that PTI chief Imran Khan had been working on a narrative to “create divisions in the military” To remove the public’s attention from the foreign funding case and Toshakhana Reference.
“Fawad Chaudhry and Shahbaz Gill were given the responsibility of spreading the narrative. … a private news channel was also involved in this conspiracy,” the minister said, referring to ARY News.
Earlier Fawad Chaudhry, a former cabinet minister of Khan, took to Twitter in the afternoon announcing Gill had been “abducted by people who arrived in cars without license plates”.
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