A senior adviser to Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi said on Monday a joint investigation team (JIT) probing last month’s gun attack on former prime minister Imran Khan’s anti-government rally had established there was more than one shooter involved in the incident.
Khan, who was ousted from power in a no-confidence vote in April, kicked off a “long march” to the federal capital from the country’s eastern city of Lahore to mount pressure on the government to announce early general elections in the country.
However, his motorized caravan came under attack by a gunman in Wazirabad city on November 3 who killed a supporter of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and injured 10 others, including the ex-premier, with gunshot wounds.
The gunman was arrested by the police and claimed to have launched the attack on his own under religious motivations. However, his statement was belied by Khan and his close aides who blamed PTI’s political rivals and the country’s powerful security establishment for conspiring to kill the former prime minister.
Subsequently, the Punjab provincial administration, which includes Khan’s party as a senior coalition partner, constituted a JIT to probe the incident.
“The JIT has established that there was more than one attacker [in Wazirabad], though the exact number is yet to be determined,” said Brig. (r) Musaddiq Abbasi, who advises the Punjab chief minister on prosecution, during a news conference in Lahore.
He added the polygraph test of the arrested attacker, Naveed, had also showed that he took adequate training before launching the attack with the help of other individuals.
Abbasi said the JIT had also examined the weapons of Khan’s own security guards and determined they were not involved in the firing incident in Wazirabad.
The adviser to the Punjab chief minister informed that several members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party were summoned by the investigation team who decided not to appear before its officials.
Meanwhile, former governor of the province and Khan’s close aide Omer Sarfraz Cheema, who was also present at the news conference, said several PML-N leaders had threatened PTI and its leadership of dire consequences when the march to Islamabad was announced.
He said the Punjab police had launched an inter-departmental inquiry to figure out how Naveed’s statements during the interrogation process had been leaked to the press.
