Imran Khan renews calls for protests

Islamabad: Lashing out at the Shehbaz Sharif government on Monday, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairperson and former Prime Minister and Imran Khan issued a call for peaceful protests against a ‘threat’ to the sanctity of the Supreme Court and the Constitution of Pakistan, media reports said.

“All citizens be ready for peaceful protests as once again Constitution and SC destroyed, it is the end of the Pak dream”, he said in a tweet, Express Tribune reported.

The former Prime Minister condemned the arrests of PTI workers and protesters in the aftermath of his arrest and subsequent rioting last week.

“So without any investigation into who was responsible for arson on government building or dozens of deaths of unarmed protesters by bullet wounds, around 7,000 PTI workers, leadership and our women have been jailed with plans to ban the largest and only federal party in Pak (sic),” he said.

The deposed Prime Minister has further called out the country’s security forces for colluding with the federal government in what he described as subversion of the Constitution. “Meanwhile these goons are being facilitated by our security agencies to take over the SC and subvert the constitution [sic],” he said as he shared clips of people climbing over a gate and entering the Red Zone at the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) protest outside the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday.

On May 9, personnel of the paramilitary Rangers barged into the Islamabad High Court (IHC) premises, where Imran Khan had appeared in connection with the Al-Qadir Trust case to face graft proceedings against him, and whisked the former premier away in a whirlwind raid carried out on the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) behalf.