ISLAMABAD: Following the recovery of Intezar Hussain Panjutha, the lawyer for PTI founding chairman Imran Khan, on Saturday night, the party labeled the incident as staged and urged the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take suo motu notice of the situation.
The PTI also called for an FIR to be filed against the attorney general, who had claimed in the high court that Mr. Panjutha would be presented in court within 24 hours, implying he was aware of the lawyer’s location.
Mr. Panjutha was reportedly found by police in Attock while being transported by his kidnappers. He was subsequently taken to the hospital for medical attention.
PTI leader Shaukat Basra, speaking to Dawn, rejected the video evidence surrounding the recovery, describing it as a “scripted drama.”
“We demand accountability for those who abducted Mr. Panjutha on October 8 from Islamabad, and those responsible for the videos are complicit in the abduction and its cover-up,” he stated.
Mr. Basra questioned how the attorney general could confidently assert in court that Mr. Panjutha would be presented within a day.
Hammad Azhar, another PTI leader, condemned the police’s narrative. “The disgraceful and staged manner in which Imran Khan’s lawyer Intezar Panjutha has been ‘recovered’ (or rather released) is shameful. The traumatized individual was likely coerced into giving a false account of his abduction while in a vulnerable state,” he posted on social media platform X.
PTI leader Amir Mughal echoed these sentiments, rejecting the circumstances of the recovery and calling for a judicial commission to investigate the case. He further noted that Mr. Panjutha had reportedly endured severe torture at the hands of his captors.
