Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party to challenge Imran Khan's arrest in Supreme Court: Report

Islamabad: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on Wednesday announced that it will challenge in the Supreme Court the ruling of the Islamabad High Court which termed the arrest of its chief and former prime minister Imran Khan as legal, according to a media report.

Khan, 70, was arrested by the paramilitary Rangers in a corruption case from the IHC and bundled into a prison van sparking massive protests across the country by supporters of his PTI party.

Following Khan’s arrest, PTI vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi summoned an emergency meeting of the seven-member committee to review the situation and devise a comprehensive strategy to secure the safe and early release of the party chair, the Geo News reported.

Qureshi interacted with the committee members Senators Saifullah Khan Nyazee, Azam Swati, Ijaz Chaudhry, Murad Saeed, Ali Amin Khan Gandapur, and Hassan Niazi.

"PTI will challenge the IHC's decision to term party chief Imran Khan’s arrest by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) 'legal' before the Supreme Court today (Wednesday)," he was quoted as saying in the report.

Qureshi, a former foreign minister, maintained that the demand for Khan's release is a reasonable and legitimate demand.

Khan will be presented before the accountability court on Wednesday, a NAB source said.

Moreover, terming the Al-Qadir Trust case a "dirty political case" and a "revenge plot," the PTI vice chairman asserted: "We will fight it politically and legally." He further added that PTI will hold peaceful but vigorous protests across the country to ensure the release of its chairman as soon as possible, the Geo news report said.

He also noted that the IHC was raided to arrest Khan despite the fact that the PTI chairman had offered voluntary arrest in his statement before appearing in court.

"Arrest of Imran Khan is fascism and it is condemnable to attack the Islamabad High Court during biometrics and injure lawyers,” he remarked and made an appeal to the chief justice of IHC to issue an order for his immediate recovery and appearance in the court.

Khan's party has claimed that at least four people were killed and over a dozen injured in different parts of the country in violent clashes between the security forces and PTI supporters.

On Tuesday, a NAB official said that Khan has been arrested in the case related to Al-Qadir Trust, owned by the PTI chairman and his wife Bushra Bibi, which is about the setting up of Al-Qadir University for Sufism in the 2019 Sohawa area of Jhelum district of Punjab.

Khan's arrest warrant, issued on May 1, said that he was accused of corruption and corrupt practice.

The anti-graft watchdog has also justified the PTI chief's arrest with the help of Rangers from inside the court premises on Tuesday and termed it legal and purely according to the NAB laws.