HARIPUR: The police on Friday arrested personal secretary and manager of a factory owned by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s general secretary Omar Ayub Khan for sheltering the former MNA, who has been absconding in a number of criminal cases registered against him since May 9 riots.

Police sources said Naeemullah Khan, personal secretary of the former federal minister, and Mohammad Idrees, the manager of the factory in Hattar industrial area, were picked near the district secretariat on a tip-off.

The police would produce them before the court of judicial magistrate on Saturday (today) for seeking their physical remand.

The sources said both were arrested after registration of an FIR against them under section 212 of PPC. This section mentions: “Whenever an offence has been committed, whoever harbours or conceals a person whom he knows and has reasons to believe to be an offender, with the intention of screening him from the legal punishment, is liable for fine and imprisonment”.

The police said according to intelligence reports both the employees of Omar Ayub Khan were allegedly involved in harbouring him, facilitating his movement from one place to other, providing him information that helped him abscond since the May 9 episode.

The local PTI workers had initially shared the news on social media about the arrest of two employees of Omar Ayub from outside the office of returning officer for NA-18, where both had gone with lawyers and supporters to file nomination papers of Omar Ayub and his wife, Shehrnaz Omar Ayub as candidates for Feb 8 elections.

It may be added that the Punjab police chief had filed a report with the Lahore High Court the other day revealing that a total of 21 cases were registered against Omar Ayub. Sharing details of the cases, the IG Punjab informed the court that 13 cases were registered in Rawalpindi, four in Lahore, three in Attock and one in Gujranwala.

Omar Ayub had appeared for a few hours on the occasion of burial of his father, late Gohar Ayub Khan, former NA speaker and foreign minister, in their native graveyard in Rehana village on Nov 18.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2023