Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Vice Chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi was arrested Wednesday, hours after the police apprehended PTI Secretary General Asad Umar as the authorities crack down on the party’s leadership amid countrywide protests due to PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s arrest.
\nPeople familiar with the matter said that Qureshi has been taken into custody for 15 days under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960.
\nThe people added that both \u2014 Qureshi and Umar \u2014 have been shifted to the Secretariat Police Station in the federal capital, with police trying to arrest PTI Senior Vice President Fawad Chaudhry as well.
\nThe PTI’s top-tier leadership is being put behind bars, sources said, to ensure law and order as they are the ones calling the shots \u2014 may it be protests or other disruptions being caused in the country.
\nThe protests are being held in remote and major cities alike as the party workers are agitated due to their chairman’s arrest, with Balochistan, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Islamabad summoning the armed forces to ensure law and order.
\nUmar, also a close confidant of Khan, was arrested by the anti-terrorist squad (ATS) from the premises of the IHC \u2014 the same court from where the PTI chief was taken into custody.
\nThe Islamabad police’s ATS officials picked up Umar from outside the IHC Bar Room where he and other PTI leaders were preparing a plea to be filed file in the IHC seeking a meeting with Khan.
\nAccording to eyewitnesses, the PTI lawyers fought with the police to prevent Umar’s arrest, but the law enforcers overpowered them and took the PTI leader away.
\nThe former finance minister was booked in two cases registered against him and other PTI leaders following the protests that ensued after Khan’s arrest.
\nThe cases were registered in Islamabad’s Tarnol and Aabpara police stations.
\nQureshi, Senator Saifullah Sarwar Khan Nyazee, and Ghulam Sarwar Khan were also with Umar when the CTD men swooped on him.
\nAll three leaders returned to the IHC’s Bar Room after Umar was taken by the police.
\nThe police also tried arresting Qureshi, however, the lawyers and other party workers thwarted the police from snatching the PTI vice chairman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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