A day after an anti-terrorism court in Lahore discharged PTI leader Dr Yasmin Rashid in a case regarding the attack on the corps commander’s house, Punjab police chief Dr Usman Anwar on Sunday called the former health minister a ‘key planner’ of May 9 attacks and announced challenging the ATC decision in the high court.
Addressing a hurriedly called press conference at the Central Police Office (CPO) along with Lahore police chief Bilal Siddique Kamyana, SSP investigation Dr Anoosh Masood Chaudhry, and SSP Imran Kishwar, the police chief said that attacks on Lahore Corps Commander House and GHQ were “well-planned by the PTI leaders”.
According to some police experts, the presser was called to express the reaction of the Punjab police to the ATC decision which discharged the PTI central Punjab president in the corps commander house attack case.
“We detected 41 calls of the PTI leader Dr Yasmin Rashid, among other party leaders, which were enough to produce as evidence in a court of law to prove them as planners and perpetrators of the attacks on the military installation,” the IG said.
He also played the video clips of Dr Rashid on a TV screen wherein, the IG claimed, she was “planning the attack on Jinnah House”.
Dr Usman also discussed the role of other PTI key leaders, including Hammad Azhar, Mian Aslam Iqbal and Murad Raas, saying police also traced the call record of these suspects to “prove their direct involvement in the attacks” on military installations.
“We are confident enough to prove in a court of law that these PTI leaders were not innocent and that the attacks were not carried out all of a sudden in reaction to the arrest of the PTI chairman,” he said.
He said they would challenge the ATC decision to release Dr Rashid and Hammad Azhar, saying police would present evidence that they had been making calls to protesters for attacks on the military installations.
“Dr Yasmin Rashid is nominated in [a] statement of [a] complainant and eyewitnesses recorded under Section 161 of CrPC [Criminal Procedure Code], but the learned judge ignored the same while discharging her from [the] case,”
“The judge wanted the name of the accused in the supplementary statement, which has no evidentiary value in the eyes of law; on the other hand, Dr Yasmin Rashid is nominated in statements recorded under Section 161 of CrPC, which is sufficient proof of her involvement in [the] case,” the source claimed in a comment on the case against the PTI leader.
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