IK insists, Elahi resists registration of ‘political’ FIR

ISLAMABAD: Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Elahi is trying to cool down Imran Khan and convince him for a fact-based FIR on Thursday’s assassination attempt instead of making it a political case and involve the military establishment in it. 

Informed sources said that the chief minister is trying to avert a situation where any key player of military establishment is named in the FIR as it would neither be in favour of the PTI/PMLQ nor the country and its institutions.

The suspect attacker, who claimed to have planned to kill Imran Khan on his own and without anyone else’s support, is in police custody. Within hours of the attack, Imran Khan on Thursday had named through Asad Umar three persons -- Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and a senior army officer -- as responsible for the attempt on his life.

No FIR has been lodged as yet. Imran Khan is being advised to nominate the arrested suspect and unknown persons in the FIR instead of naming the prime minister, interior minister and a serving major general.

Khan has not yet lodged any complaint with the police. There is no explanation offered so far by either the PTI or the Punjab government as to why there is a delay in the filing of complaint and registration of FIR. The Punjab government, however, is not keen to include the names particularly that of a senior military officer.

Sources said that the issue has been discussed with Imran Khan by the Chief Minister Pervez Elahi, who, against PTI chairman, has the best of relationship with the military establishment. Elahi does not want the police to register the kind of FIR Imran Khan insists on.

The chief minister had referred the case to Counter Terrorism Department for prompt and scientific investigations and to find out who was behind the suspect, arrested on the crime scene by the police within minutes of the shooting.

On Friday evening, Imran Khan again said that three people, including Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and a serving Major General, made the plan to assassinate him after they saw that the number of people in his long march was exponentially increasing.

Imran Khan urged his followers and members to continue staging protests till the removal of all these three from their present posts. Meanwhile, it was learnt that Imran Khan was very angry over his party leaders for not bringing enough people on the streets on Friday to protest against the assassination attempt on his life.

A source said that Khan reminded his party leaders of how the people had reacted following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He said that the people at that time had protested for three days and life was brought to a standstill in the entire country but in his case the PTI leaders could not bring out enough people and only managed a few protests for hardly a few hours. He also told his party leaders that they should publicly name all the three, including the major general, whom he held responsible for the assassination attempt on his life on Thursday.