Imran Khan booked in missing cipher case

ISLAMABAD: The Anti-Terrorist Wing (ATW) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has registered a case against former prime minister Imran Khan on the missing cipher issue after reaching the conclusion that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman was deliberately involved in misusing the classified documents, FIA sources said Wednesday.

People engaged in the investigation of the case disclosed that the case would be completed on priority and challan would be presented before the court of law. The decision of lodging the FIR was made in the light of a report prepared after a high-level investigation.

In the ongoing investigation into the cipher controversy, former PM’s principal secretary Azam Khan again appeared before the joint investigation team (JIT) at the FIA headquarters after he was summoned, the FIA confirmed and added that Azam Khan remained with the JIT for over one and a half hours.

Azam Khan answered some questions to clear ambiguities in his earlier statement, the sources maintained. The JIT later evaluated his statement.

The FIA later registered a case against Imran for allegedly losing the US cipher he had earlier blamed for triggering the overthrow of his government.

Meanwhile, the capital police JIT has decided to carry out forensics of the telephonic conversation of Bushra Bibi, which later became public, and the receipts of Toshakhana watch and other related items after she termed the allegations a “pack of lies”.

The JIT sources told this correspondent that the receipts and audio recording are likely to be dispatched to the laboratory for forensic examination on Thursday (today).

Earlier on Tuesday, the FIA JIT grilled Imran in the cipher case. They also confirmed that the JIT grilled Khan in the Attock jail. “The JIT met Imran in the office of deputy superintendent jail,” FIA sources told Geo News.

Sources said the JIT was keen to see how and who had leaked the document’s content to the media and whether the content of the cipher, as shared by The Intercept, is original or exaggerated.

These sources hoped that the probe would conclude within a week or 10 days.

Retention of the cipher copy by the former prime minister, the source said, is an admitted fact. It is an offence, the source said. Twisting and manipulation of the secret document for political gain is also a violation of the law, added the source.

The JIT, which was constituted by the former government, had already grilled Imran Khan, Fawad Chaudhry, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Asad Umar, and Foreign Office officials.