GUJRAT: Pakistan Teh­reek Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan said on Sunday that he was fighting against ‘mafias’ in Pakistani politics

“Politicians do not get people killed. Rather they serve the people. I have been waging a struggle against the mafias led by Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari,” Mr Khan said while speaking at a large gathering in Mandi Baha­uddin city where party workers from neighbouring Gujrat, Sargodha, Hafiza­bad and Jhelum districts were also among the participants.

The PTI leader called for making the Joint Investi­gation Team report on Uzair Baloch public so that people could know how political mafias operated in the country.

He accused the Sharifs of getting people murdered through extrajudicial killings by police and cited the case of Model Town firing.

Levelling serious allegations against Mr Zardari, the co-chairman of the PPP, which had once been the most popular party in Mandi Bahauddin district, Mr Khan claimed that Uzair Baloch informed the JIT about killing many people on the instructions of Zardari. He said Uzair had confessed that he had murdered Shehenshah who was a bodyguard of Benazir Bhutto at the time of her assassination.

PTI chief urges supporters to get ready for elections

“Uzair had also confessed to occupying 14 sugar mills in Sindh as well as houses surrounding Bilawal House in Karachi on the orders of Zardari and the owners were later paid meagre amounts. Uzair had also paid Rs10 million collected through extortion to Zardari’s sister,” he said.

On the other hand, he said, the mafia being led by the Sharif family had been governing Punjab for 30 years; they had started from a five marla house in Gawalmandi and then became billionaire through corruption and money laundering.

Mr Khan claimed that he had once called on Nawaz Sharif in 1986 when the latter was Punjab’s chief minister, along with a friend to save the life of a man in police custody as extrajudicial killings were rampant in those days. He said Mr Sharif had promised the man in question would not be killed but police eliminated him through torture in custody the following day.

Urging his supporters to get ready for the next elections, Mr Khan vowed to introduce reforms in country’s tax as well as accountability systems to steer Pakistan out of crises.

He said that if voted to power, the PTI would give free education, health and justice as well as security unlike the Sahrif’s rule in Punjab where Rs7 billion had so far been spent only on the security of Raiwind palace over the past five years, with the Peshawar’s Shaukat Khan­num Hospital, which was much better and latest as compared to Lahore’s, had been established only in Rs4bn.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2017