Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry on Wednesday said that the PTI could not “absolve themselves of responsibility” after a man was shot dead by law enforcement officials on Rawalpindi’s Mall Road for allegedly opening fire on security forces.

PTV News, quoting security sources, said the alleged assailant was a resident of Khyber district and an “active PTI member”. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar had slammed PTI’s “politics of violence” after state media reported the incident.

However, the PTI had distanced itself from the incident, saying it had nothing to do with terrorism and that efforts were being made to link the party to it.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Wednesday, Chaudhry said, “For years, the PTI leadership has been told not to perpetuate the politics of hatred and anarchy.”

He said that the party was told not to influence the youth with “ideas which could not be removed”.

“When a young person fills his mind with such hatred and anarchy, he expresses it somewhere in his own way. Yesterday’s incident is an example of this,” he said.

“The PTI leadership cannot absolve themselves of responsibility by saying that they had no association with the worker,” he said. “Who trained the political workers? Who provided them with an ideology? Who filled their minds?”

Adding that the PTI had claimed the man was in an unstable mental condition, Chaudhry asked why, in that case, he had not attacked his family or party members or inflicted self-harm, but rather only attacked security forces — the institution against which “the party had incited him”, the minister said.

The minister added that the alleged shooter had a PTI flag and other information on his mobile phone, reiterating that the party could not separate themselves from the incident.

He accused them of continuously filling the minds of youth with “hatred and anarchy”, whether via their founder’s tweets or speeches, speeches of their leaders or discussions in internal meetings. This, he said, was what led to the incidents of May 9 and Nov 26 as well as yesterday.

Chaudhry slammed the PTI for not even sparing the statues of martyrs and ridiculing them on social media and in statements while soldiers gave their lives for the country.

He alleged that it was not only the party’s leadership responsible for this event, but also YouTubers, social media influencers and “opinion makers” outside the country whose only purpose was to gain views and earn money while stirring up the youth.

He pointed out that the attack was not on a worker of any political party, but a soldier of Pakistan who was performing his duty to maintain law and order, asking if this sort of violence was “politics”. Rather, he called for politics through performance, challenging the PTI to show what progress had been made in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where they had been in government for 17 years.

“Neither the country nor Pakistanis can be served through hatred, anarchy (and) violence,” he said.

The minister added that yesterday’s incident was a sign of what would be done during the planned long march to Islamabad on September 27.

He noted that the alleged assailant had published videos on social media showing himself attacking police personnel, saying that PTI leaders and workers had published speeches and videos on their social media accounts inciting violence.

“On one hand they say they have no connection with such people, while on the other hand they defend them,” he said, criticising the party for upholding as “heroes” those who had been convicted, and whose social media accounts were filled with posts of taking the law in their own hands and spreading violence on May 9 and Nov 26.

Regarding Tuesday’s shooting, Chaudhry said, “Sometimes you absolve yourself of responsibility; other times you ask for CCTV footage … It was a full market, in a sensitive area. A lot of people witnessed the scene.”

He asked why, if the alleged assailant was mentally unstable, the party had kept him on the frontline of protests and continued bringing him to meet representatives.

“Do you use youngsters? Or people who are mentally weak?” he asked. “Or are you making excuses … why did you not part ways before if he was unstable?”

Chaudhry said that while politics was everyone’s right, the PTI was not serving anyone with this type of politics, and only giving Pakistan a bad name while slowly becoming irrelevant.

He said that a “fair and free” investigation into the incident was underway and the results would be made known.