Islamabad: Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan was on Tuesday arrested by paramilitary Rangers while he was present at the Islamabad High Court for the hearing of a corruption case, his party said. The chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), who travelled from Lahore to the federal capital Islamabad, was taken into custody by the Rangers when he appeared in court on anti-graft charges, his PTI lawyer Faisal Chaudhry said.

His party confirmed the arrest of the 70-year-old for-mer cricketer-turned-politician. “Khan has been arrested in the Al-Qadeer trust case when he was present in the Islamabad High Court,” his party said in a brief state-ment. The arrest comes a day after the powerful army had accused Khan of levelling baseless allegations against a senior army officer. The PTI alleged that Khan was being tortured but it was not confirmed in-dependently. “State terrorism – break-ing into IHC premises to ab-duct Imran Khan from court premises. Law of the jungle in operation. Rangers beat the lawyers, used violence on Imran Khan and ab-ducted him,” tweeted former minister Shireen Mazari, a PTI spokeswoman.

Another PTI leader Azhar Mashwani alleged that Khan had been “abduct-ed” from inside the court by the Rangers. He said that the party had given an immedi-ate call for staging protests in the country.”They are torturing Im-ran Khan right now […] they are beating Khan sahib. They have done something with Khan sahib,” Cheema said in a video message posted on the party’s Twitter handle.Former information min-ister and PTI Vice President Fawad Chaudhry earlier said the court has been “oc-cupied by the Rangers” and lawyers “are being subject-ed to torture”.”Imran Khan’s car has been surrounded,” he added. Khan has been facing a slew of cases since his ouster through a no trust vote in April last year. He has re-jected all these cases as po-litical victimisation by the ruling alliance. PTI

Press Trust of India