Lahore: Jailed former premier Imran Khan’s nephew Shershah Khan was sent to a five-day physical remand by a Pakistani court Saturday in a case related to the May 9, 2023, riots.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) claimed that the government took this step to use it as a “bargaining chip” with the 72-year-old cricketer-turned-politician who has been behind bars since August 2023 after he was booked in multiple cases.
Punjab Police arrested Shershah Khan while he was on the way to his home Friday afternoon. His brother Shahrez Khan was arrested on Thursday during a raid at his house in Lahore.
Shershah and Shahrez are sons of Imran Khan’s sister Aleema.
The Lahore Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) remanded Shahrez to an eight-day physical remand on Friday.
The investigating officer told the ATC Saturday that Shershah was arrested in connection to the Jinnah House attack. He was allegedly involved in an attack on the Lahore Corps Commander’s residence also known as Jinnah Hospital.
A prosecutor of the Punjab government told the ATC that Shershah was seen in a video of the incident.
Shershah’s counsel Salman Akram Raja said his client’s arrest was “illegal”, as it came 27 months after the incident and claimed that he was “falsely implicated”.
On May 9, 2023, Imran Khan supporters protesting his arrest, staged violent protests across the country, allegedly vandalising military installations and state-owned buildings.
Following the riots, the state launched a crackdown on Khan’s party and arrested over 10,000 people, including its prominent leaders.
Many PTI leaders have recently been convicted for 10 years each in various cases related to the violence.
Talking to reporters outside the ATC, Aleema Khan said her sons had not committed any crime.
“Their only crime is that they are Imran Khan’s nephews. They are Imran Khan’s family. The arrests aimed to put pressure on Imran and his family, but let me tell you we will not succumb to this pressure,” she said.
“We can play our part by standing with Imran Khan, because he is standing for Pakistan,” she added.
Shahrez Khan’s wife Maria, in a social media post, said that her husband wasn’t a part of the May 9 protest at Jinnah House.
Sharing a “time stamped” photograph, which she claimed was from May 9, 2023, she said he was not even in Lahore but 750 kilometres away at her family home in Chitral with their friends and children.
The PTI founder’s son Kasim Khan, in a post on X, said his cousins have been “abducted”, and claimed this was “blatant state repression, punishing family members because the Supreme Court tried granting Imran Khan bail”.
“Such tactics will not break us — they only expose the injustice further. Targeting innocent family members is cruel, unlawful, and must end,” he added.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said it is alarmed by the arrest of Imran’s two nephews.
“The fact that the arrests were made 27 months after the incident is difficult to understand for any independent observer, having occurred at a time when the trials of other accused persons have been long underway or already concluded,” the HRCP said in a statement.
Imran’s other nephew, Hassan Niazi, has been convicted by a military court in a case related to the May 9 riots.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court Thursday granted bail to Khan in eight cases related to the May 9 violence.
PTI
