PTI MPA Hisham Inamullah lashed out at party vice president Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday for what he said was uttering a “racist remark” playing on stereotypes about Pakhtuns.

A day ago in an appearance on anchorperson Kashif Abbasi’s ARY News programme “Off the Record”, the two were discussing an alleged incident about former Federal Investigation Agency Director General Bashir Memon being locked in a bathroom of the Prime Minister House by former principal secretary Azam Khan.

Chaudhry then remarked: “He took a big risk in going to the bathroom with a Khan (Pakhtun),” which prompted Abbasi to cut to a break.

Responding to the quip, Inamullah released a statement on his Twitter account, saying that he was “proud to be a Pathan”.

Inamullah said he “strongly condemned” Chaudhry’s insinuation and considered it to be disrespectful to the entire Pakhtun community.

“This is a shameful and disreputable allegation,” he said, adding that if Chaudhry thought this about Pakhtuns, then why was he in a party whose leader and most of its members also shared that ethnicity.

“Pathan, Baloch, Sindhi and Punjabi together make Pakistan. We think that no ethnicity is superior to another, all have had leading roles in establishing Pakistan and its system and everyone should take care about the other’s respect and stature.”

Inamullah said that thoughts like Chaudhry’s led to discord, mistrust and unrest between ethnicities, adding that the PTI leader should ask for forgiveness from the Pakhtun community and strive to become “actually free” from such thinking if he considered himself to be a national leader and PTI member.

Chaudhry has yet to comment on the matter. Dawn.com has reached out to the former minister and the PTI for comment.

Dawn News anchor Adil Shahzeb also tagged a bevy of PTI ministers and leaders from the Pakhtun community, saying that he expected them to strongly condemn Chaudhry’s racist remarks.

One of the tagged individuals, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra, said: “No question about it, strongly condemned.”

However, he did ask Shahzeb if he in turn condemned the government on a number of other issues.