Police present outside Imran Khan's residence not to arrest him, but to disperse protesters: Islamabad cops

Aug 07, 2022

Islamabad [Pakistan], August 8 : On the presence of police outside former Prime Minister Imran Khan's residence Banigala with alleged plans to arrest him, Islamabad police clarified that it was not to arrest the leader but to disperse protests staged by teachers from Punjab, media outlets said.
It is worth mentioning that Imran Khan's PTI is back in Punjab province after the win in bypolls.
Notably, a "viral video" linked the presence of police outside PTI Chairman Imran Khan's Banigala residence with alleged plans to arrest him. However, Islamabad police issued a clarification regarding the footage outside Banigala.
On Tuesday, teachers and clerks associations had threatened to stage a protest outside Imran's residence on August 11 against the appointment of the District Education Authority's chief executive officer.
The protesters had carried placards, chanted slogans against the Punjab government and demanded to withdraw the decision of appointing a new chief executive officer.
The clarification was issued by capital city police on Sunday through its Twitter handle. They rejected the notion and clarified that heavy police presence outside Imran's residence was to disperse a protest staged by teachers from Punjab,
Footage being shared on social media showed that police personnel and vehicles were present at Banigala, while its entry and exit points were blocked.
The Islamabad police while responding to the footage said, "The police security was deployed yesterday due to the protest of the teachers of Punjab. All the protesters were dispersed only last evening. There was no such activity around Banigala house today."
The police said "wrong information" was being spread among the public via the video and requested people to desist from spreading such information without verification. The Islamabad police also requested provincial governments to resolve such matters at their level.
Notably, Imran Khan is currently surrounded by controversy over the foreign funding case in Pakistan where the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) accused Khan's party of using prohibited funds.
The probe agency has identified four employees of the PTI secretariat, whose personal and salary accounts were used for receiving foreign funding.
In the statements, the PTI employees said that they used to give the money received in their accounts to Imran Khan party's finance manager, as per the report.
They said they would give signed blank cheques to the finance manager. According to the publication, the FIA came to know during the investigation that besides other accounts, foreign funding was also received in employees' salary accounts.
This investigation came a few days after the three-member Election Commission of Pakistan bench in a unanimous verdict ruled that the PTI received prohibited funding in the case pending since 2014, Geo News reported.
Akbar S Babar, the man who blew the lid off the scam involving the inflow of dubious foreign funds into Imran Khan's political outfit Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) formally approached the FIA to initiate a probe against the PTI on Wednesday. On August 4, the Pakistan government decided to file a disqualification reference against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan after the verdict of the prohibited funding case and the federal cabinet accepted the recommendation.