Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday announced he has given a 72-hour deadline to law enforcers to ensure the arrest of anyone involved in the ransacking and destruction of public and private properties during the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s protests against the arrest of Imran Khan.
“I have given law enforcement apparatus a target of 72 hours to arrest all those involved in facilitating, abetting and perpetrating the disgraceful incidents of arson, ransacking, sabotage and damaging public and private properties,” he wrote on Twitter. “All available resources, including technological aid and intelligence, are being deployed to chase down these elements. Bringing these people to justice is a test case for the government. Their cases will be tried by the anti-terrorism courts,” he added.
In a televised address, he further said that no innocent people would be targeted in an ongoing crackdown against rioters, adding that everything would be done in accordance with law.
The caretaker Punjab government, earlier, announced it was constituting a joint investigation team to probe the attack on the Lahore Corps Commander’s House that left it ransacked and set on fire. Caretaker Punjab Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi, presiding over a meeting to review the law and order situation, said the JIT would probe “upsetting incidents of vandalism and arson at the Jinnah House and military and civil installations” and submit a comprehensive report to the government.
He also ordered the expediting of legal action against the culprits and urged for their identification through geo-fencing. “Every miscreant will be taken to court with evidence,” he said, warning that the people responsible for the destruction would not be able to escape punishment.
‘Double standards’
A day earlier, in an address to the federal cabinet, the prime minister slammed the judiciary’s “bias” toward the PTI chief, decrying the “double standards of justice” that had accorded “extraordinary relief” to the former prime minister. “The judiciary has become an iron shield for Imran Khan,” he said, while recalling the ambivalence of the same courts when other politicians were jailed in fake cases.
“These are the double standards of justice,” he said, expressing astonishment at Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial’s remarking he was “happy to see” Khan during court proceedings. Stressing that thousands of cases of the general public were pending before the courts, he questioned why cases related to the PTI received such preferential treatment by the judges. He further alleged that the judiciary had “protected” Khan earlier by dismissing or sidelining cases such as the Bus Rapid Transit project, the Billion Tree Tsunami project, and the Malam Jabba development initiative.
“May 9, after the debacle of Dec. 16, 1971, was a painful day in the country’s history when Imran Khan’s party unleashed havoc by attacking national and military installations,” he said, recalling the same had not even been witnessed after the “judicial murder” of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Maintaining that Khan was the “mastermind and planner” of the attacks on military installations this week, he termed it a “disgrace” to martyred soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the motherland.