By Nazim Malik
Mystery shrouds the death toll in the PTI Islamabad sit in as every Pakistani was keen to know about today.
Social media has been taken by storm for conflicting claims about the death toll.
PTI leader Sardar Latif Khosa claims 238 PTI workers were killed and 1900 received bullet injuries. Another PTI stalwart says 40 were killed.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi denies these claims and asks the PTI to prove them. He says no state firing on protesters.
After fleeing from the site of the PTI’s high-stakes Islamabad protest, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur on Wednesday resurfaced in Mansehra, where he assured his party workers that the “sit-in is still ongoing” while the police said that nearly 1,000 protesters were arrested.
After a day of clashes between security forces and protesters in the city’s Red Zone ended in the party leadership’s hasty retreat, the PTI announced in the early hours of Wednesday that it was calling off its planned protest sit-in “for the time being”.
As PTI supporters inched towards the heavily barricaded D-Chowk late on Tuesday, the police and security forces employed tactics to clear the venue from the protesters.
Addressing a press conference in the afternoon in Mansehra, CM Gandapur said the sit-in “is still ongoing”, adding that it would not end till PTI founder Imran Khan ordered so.
“People have died in this protest, we must pray for them,” the chief minister said during the press conference held at the residence of KP Speaker Babar Saleem Swati.
“We have been targets of violence,” he said, lamenting that the PTI was not permitted to protest whenever it sought to.
“When we gave the protest call, we said this would be peaceful. Imran Khan said we will go to D-Chowk peacefully and we will not go ahead of D-Chowk where we are not permitted.
“[Imran] Khan sahib gave this call, and he said this protest will continue until I call it off,” CM Gandapur highlighted. “It is not necessary that every sit-in has people in it. Unfortunately, our party has been cracked down upon, our mandate has been stolen. Our leader is in jail, our leader’s wife was thrown in jail,” Gandapur said, referring to Imran and Bushra, who was recently freed on bail after nine months in jail.
“We were going peacefully, talking peacefully, and in the end, the govt came in our path and inflicted violence on us. Why were bullets rained down on us?” the KP CM asked.
The PTI statement has condemned the alleged “killing” and “terror and brutality against peaceful protesters in the name of an operation”.
The PTI appealed to Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi to take suo motu notice of the alleged “brutal murder of martyred [party] workers” and order legal action against the prime minister and interior minister as well as Islamabad and Punjab police chiefs for “attempt to murder”. PAK DESTINY
