Imran Khan grilled in jail for an hour, again admits to losing cipher

ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: Former prime minister and Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan once again confessed on Saturday that he had lost the cipher and he was unable to recall where he kept it.

He was responding to questions by a three-member team of Cybercrime Circle of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), headed by Deputy Director Ayyaz Khan, in the Attock Jail.

The FIA team grilled him in the missing cipher case, and asked him various questions to reach a conclusion, sources said, adding that Imran Khan cooperated with the investigation team and responded to queries with patience.

Imran Khan denied that the paper which he waved in a public gathering was cipher. “The paper I gestured in the public was cabinet meeting minutes, and not cipher,” he claimed and added that it was his right as the prime minister to keep the document with him, but he could not respond as to why he exposed it as the cipher in public. “It was, probably, last session of investigation of cipher issue,” sources said and added that people engaged in the investigation of the case would initiate mutual meetings to come to a conclusion.

Sources said the investigation into the cipher issue would be completed during the coming week and challan would be submitted in a court of law.

Meanwhile, PTI Chairman Imran Khan challenged the rejection of his nine bail applications in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Saturday. Following denial of bail pleas in cases involving incidents like the May 9 riots, attacks on the Judicial Complex, and fake accounts, he submitted nine applications through his lawyer, Salman Safdar, in the IHC.

Out of these applications, six were turned down by a sessions court, while three faced rejection by an anti-terrorism court (ATC). The PTI lawyer, in the petitions presented to the IHC, requested that the decisions to reject the bail pleas should be declared null and void. Additionally, the lawyer sought the IHC guidance to have the trial courts re-evaluate the cases on their merits and prevent the police from arresting the PTI chairman in connection with these nine cases.

The PTI chairman had previously approached the Supreme Court with a petition against IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq.

The petition, filed by Latif Khosa on behalf of the PTI chairman, invoked Article 186-A and called for transfer of his cases from the IHC to the Lahore or Peshawar high courts.

Separately, the FIA registered a case against the PTI leaders for launching an alleged false campaign against the state institutions on social media.

The FIA Cybercrime Circle registered the case against former finance minister Hammad Azhar, Musarrat Jamshed Cheema, former National Assembly deputy speaker Qasim Suri, former Punjab governor Omer Sarfraz Cheema, Senator Azam Swati, Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party’s Ali Zaidi and former PTI senior vice president Fawad Chaudhry.

The nominated accused were summoned by the agency for investigation but none of them joined investigations. Then the agency conducted its own investigations. Sources claimed the FIA, during the course of inquiry, found enough evidence due to which a case was registered against them.