KARACHI: Police on Sunday morning arrested a Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf lawmaker from his Clifton apartment over a sexual harassment case.

The provincial PTI leadership slammed the arrest of a member of the Sindh Assembly and described the FIR against him as ‘suspicious’.

South-SSP Asad Raza told Dawn that PTI lawmakers Khurram Sher Zaman and Haleem Adil Sheikh approached the Boat Basin police for lodging an FIR pertaining to kidnapping of their colleague. However, they were told that their party MPA had been arrested in a sexual harassment case that took place in Keamari.

The complainant woman stated in the FIR that she lived in a rented house in Liaquatabad. She said she was ‘familiar’ with the PTI lawmaker and asked him for a job. The legislator called her at an office on Saturday evening from where he took her to a warehouse in his car, but stopped the vehicle in darkness on a road and tried to sexually assault her. The woman said she raised hue and cry and got off the car and the MPA fled from there.

The SITE-B police registered the case under Section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Pakistan Penal Code on her complaint.

PTI’s Sher Zaman said ‘fake’ cases were being registered against party leaders to stop their public protests.

Former Sindh governor Imran Ismail said the MPA had been arrested on a ‘suspicious and fake’ FIR.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2022