RECORDER REPORT

LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senior Vice President Fawad Chaudhry has said that there was a planned attempt to assassinate PTI Chairman Imran Khan in the Wazirabad attack on November 3.

He expressed these views while addressing a press conference to share the details of a joint investigation team’s report on the Wazirabad attack on the PTI chief. The former federal minister said that the revelations made in the JIT report will be made public soon, adding that by reducing the number of police personnel in Gujarat, an opportunity was provided for the attack and subsequently an attempt was made to kill Imran Khan.

He claimed that a well-thought-out narrative was chalked out to give the assassination attempt a cover of religiously motivated crime. He accused PML-N leaders Javed Latif, Maryam Aurangzeb, Rana Sanaullah and Khawaja Asif of being part of the plot, as they all accused Khan of blasphemy in their separate press conferences. He claimed that to give the assassination attempt a religious touch, a plan was also made to kill suspect Naveed.

“The initial findings revealed that three assassins were present at the crime scene, 14 shells were recovered on the ground and nine shells were recovered from a building, and one suspect assailant (Naveed) was arrested. The police were in search of two other attackers,” he added.

Chaudhry averred that the report also cleared much misleading information; no bullets were fired from the guns of Khan’s security guards after their weapons were forensically tested and the 14 shells found at the crime scene were fired from three different weapons.

He also raised suspicion over the release of a confessional video of the suspect attacker (Naveed) before the PTI chief reached a hospital after the attack, which was tweeted by journalists Waqar Sati, Murtaza Solangi and Hamid Mir. “Moreover, the DPO Gujarat gave a camera to an SHO to record the confession of the attacker. In this connection, the DPO was summoned for the investigation but he did not turn up; who stopped him from recording his statement on the matter,” he added.

Chaudhry further said that a second shooter was sent to kill suspect Naveed; “it has confirmed that a bullet that hit Moazzam (a PTI supporter who was killed on the day of the attack) came from a gun of the second shooter and was intended for suspect Naveed”.

Talking about the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), he said, “Who was stopping them from presenting the records and other documents to the investigators. The federal agencies refused to provide the IP addresses used by accused Naveed,” he added.