ISLAMABAD: Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, a close aide of former prime minister Imran Khan, on Saturday said police had arrested hundreds of activists of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in overnight raids ahead of its rally in the eastern city of Lahore.
The arrests come more than a week after clashes between Khan supporters in Lahore and Islamabad that left several people injured on both sides.
Khan’s party maintained the arrests were aimed at sabotaging its power show in Lahore on Saturday, but the police dismissed the reports as “propaganda.”
“In a crackdown last night Hundreds of PTI workers have been arrested, police raided hundreds of houses and entered into the house without warrants roads are blocked, only to sabotage todays Jalsa in Lahore,” Hussain told Arab News.
“This all is happening in the month of Ramadan.”
The Khan aide said his party’s social media head, Azhar Mashwani, had been “abducted” from his home and was missing for the last 36 hours, adding that there were reports of “custodial torture.”
“I call upon international community and specially Islamic countries to condemn abductions and killings of political workers,” Hussain said.
Meanwhile, Khan said he would share his “vision” at Saturday’s rally and invited everyone to the historic Minar-e-Pakistan monument in Lahore to attend it.
“Tonight will be our 6th jalsa at Minar-i-Pakistan & my heart tells me it will break all records,” Khan said on Twitter.
“I am inviting everyone in Lahore to attend after Tarawih prayers. I will give my vision of Haqeeqi Azadi & how we will pull Pakistan out of the mess [a] cabal of crooks have put our country in.”
Khan, who was ousted in April last year, has been at loggerheads with the government of PM Shehbaz Sharif. The former premier has held several rallies and demonstrations to pressurize the government into announcing nationwide snap polls, which are otherwise scheduled by October.