Islamabad: Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan filed an application in a top court here Monday against Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah for calling the former prime minister an “enemy” of his party.
Sanaullah, who is very close to former premier and London-based PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, said when the ruling party feels that its existence is under threat, it will go to any extent against its chief political rival.
In an interview with a private TV channel, the senior leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) termed the ex-prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief an “enemy” of his party and said Khan will be “treated like that”.
“Either he will be eliminated from the political arena or us. He has now taken the country’s politics to a point where only one of the two can remain — PTI or PML-N,” Sanaullah said Saturday.
The PTI said it has never witnessed in the past that a ruling party openly declared eliminating a popular leader of Pakistan.
Seeking the Islamabad High IHC’s intervention on this issue, Khan has requested the court to block his arrest and prevent the respondents from acting on their “plans”, according to The Express Tribune newspaper.
In addition to Sanaullah, the federal government, IG Islamabad and SSP operations were made respondents to the case, the report said.
PTI Secretary General Asad Umar said courts should take notice of Sanaullah’s statements, adding that the party “has no intentions of threatening his existence”, it said.
“We did not make any cases in government and all cases against Sanaullah were National Accountability Bureau’s references,” it added.
Khan, after surviving an attack on him during a rally in Wazirabad in Punjab province in November last year, had named Sanaullah behind the assassination attempt on him.
Khan, 70, also blamed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a senior ISI officer for their role in the assassination bid.
Meanwhile, the IHC Monday granted interim bail to Khan in seven cases registered against him following clashes at the federal judicial complex here earlier this month when the former prime minister arrived from Lahore to appear in a hearing in the Toshakhana case.
Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, was ousted from power in April last year after losing a no-confidence vote, becoming the first Pakistani prime minister to be voted out by the National Assembly.
PTI