Hours before his arrest, Pakistan’s ex PM Imran Khan got bail in multiple cases

An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan on Tuesday approved former premier Imran Khan’s interim bail pleas for multiple cases, hours before the PTI chief was arrested at the Islamabad High Court by paramilitary Rangers. ATC Judge Raja Jawad Abbas heard the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party chief’s pleas seeking bail in cases about the March 18 violence outside the Federal Judicial Complex here and approved Khan’s bail against bonds worth PKR 50,000 in all seven cases, the Dawn newspaper reported.

The 70-year-old former premier was arrested on Tuesday by paramilitary Rangers while he was at the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for the hearing of a corruption case, a day after he took on the country’s powerful army for allegedly hatching a plot to kill him. “Mr Khan has been arrested in a land transfer case to property tycoon Malik Riaz and is being handed over to National Accountability Bureau (NAB)”, a NAB official confirmed to PTI. The cricketer-turned-politician requested the IHC on Tuesday to grant him interim bail in a separate case registered against him for violating Section 144 by holding a rally in Islamabad without the required permission, the report said.

Police registered a case against the PTI chief and other party leaders for holding a rally in Islamabad on Saturday without permission. Khan also complained to the IHC on Tuesday against the Islamabad police for not facilitating him in joining ongoing investigations against him. According to a petition filed through his lawyer Salman Safdar, Khan wrote to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Islamabad, the advocate general and an additional attorney general to include him in the investigations, but to no avail, as he did not receive any responses, the report said.

More than 120 cases have been registered against Khan since he was voted out of office through a no-confidence motion in April last year. He terms all the cases as fake, instituted to keep him out of the political arena. The petition said that the PTI chief wanted to be included in the investigation, but “security agencies had become tools of the government”, the report said. It added that despite repeated letters, Khan was not provided with the necessary apparatus to join the investigation. 

Currently, Khan is facing over 140 cases related to terrorism, blasphemy, murder, violence, and inciting violence. PTI chief Khan was ousted from power in April after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he alleged was part of a US-led conspiracy targeting him because of his independent foreign policy decisions on Russia, China, and Afghanistan. Khan, who came to power in 2018, is the only Pakistani Prime Minister to be ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament.