Lahore: An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan Thursday extended till January 3 the physical remand of the prime suspect and his accomplice in the November 3 botched assassination bid on the life of ousted prime minister Imran Khan.
According to a court official, police presented prime suspect Muhammad Naveed before the ATC Gujranwala on Thursday along with his accomplice Muhammad Waqas in high security.
The ATC remanded both suspects into the Joint Investigation Team’s custody for 13 days for interrogation.
“Police presented suspect Waqas before the ATC for the first time after he was recently arrested for a tweet,” the official told PTI.
He said Waqas had tweeted November 3, saying that “something big is going to happen today in Imran Khan’s rally”. Later, he deleted the tweet.
“Waqas is a relative of the prime suspect Naveed,” he said.
Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, suffered bullet injuries in the right leg when two gunmen fired a volley of bullets at him and others standing on a container-mounted truck in the Wazirabad area (some 150-km from Lahore), where he was leading the march against the Shehbaz Sharif government to press for snap polls.
In an interaction with the foreign media early this week, Khan said: “I am alive today because of the sacrifice of a worker of my party who stopped the prime suspect (Naveed) from aiming at my head. When we ducked after the fire another volley of bullets passed on top of our heads from another shooter.”
Khan, 70, had blamed Prime Minister Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, and Major General Faisal Naseer of spy agency ISI for hatching a plot to assassinate him.
The Punjab police had registered the FIR in connection with the assassination attempt on Khan but didn’t mention the ‘high profile suspects’ including ISI’s top man Khan held responsible for the attack.
Khan dismissed the FIR, saying without nominating Prime Minister Sharif, Interior Minister Sanaullah, and ISI Counter Intelligence Wing head Maj-Gen Faisal in the FIR it is a mere “piece of trash”.
The Punjab police said they nabbed Naveed from the crime scene and he had confessed to his crime. Naveed in his confessional statement said that he wanted to kill Khan as music was played during Azan time during his long march.
Indirectly blaming the powerful military establishment, Khan had said: “I wonder if I being the former Prime Minister of Pakistan can’t get an FIR registered in connection with the attack on me and other PTI workers what will happen to the common man.”
He claimed that Naveed is a trained shooter and there was another shooter who opened fire on him from another direction.
The JIT has so far recorded the statements of the policemen and PTI workers who were present close to Khan at the time of the attack on him.
Khan is recovering from his wounds and currently residing at his Lahore’s Zaman Park residence.