ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Sunday proceeded to the United Kingdom for a three-day official visit. It will be followed by a 12-day private trip, during which he is expected to seek medical treatment.

But the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) did not miss the chance to score political points over the minister’s departure and criticised him for leaving the country in the immediate aftermath of one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in recent history.

A spokesperson for the interior ministry said Chaudhry Nisar would meet his British counterpart Amber Rudd, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and UK’s National Security Adviser Mark Lyall Grant during the official leg of his tour.

A source said the minister would also ask for an update on investigations being carried out by the London Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard against Muttahida Qaumi Movement-London supremo Altaf Hussain and the mysterious murder of his deputy party chief, Imran Farooq, in Sept 2010.

Minister to meet top UK officials, will stay on for medical treatment

This comes after significant developments in the investigation into the Imran Farooq case in Pakistan; police claimed that two of the accused in custody had confessed to killing the MQM leader, describing how they murdered him in the courtyard of his own house in London.The source said the minister would definitely share the progress made in the investigation with the British authorities.

The confessional statement of Khalid Shamim, which was recorded before a magistrate in January, surfaced on Thursday, in which he suggested that Imran Farooq was killed because he was considered to be a ‘potent threat’ to the party leadership. Shamim claimed to have committed the murder alongside accomplice Kashif Kamran.

Following the official leg of his visit, the minister will stay on in London to seek medical treatment.

“The minister will undergo eye treatment and a hernia operation,” a source close to the minister told Dawn. This means that Chaudhry Nisar is likely to be in London for a total of 15 days.

However, the PPP is of the opinion that instead of proceeding abroad, the minister should have visited the Shah Noorani shrine in Khuzdar, where over 50 people were killed and over 100 others wounded in a bombing claimed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group.

PPP Senator Saeed Ghani, who advises the Sindh chief minister, expressed his astonishment over the interior minister’s decision to head to London at a time when Balochistan was drenched in the blood of innocent people.

In a statement issued by the PPP media office, Senator Ghani said: “It is most unfortunate that an irresponsible character is occupying [an] important ministry in [the] federal government and his departure for London at such [a] tragic moment for [the] country shows his irresponsible attitude.”

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2016