Islamabad: Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Monday demanded a “fair medical checkup” of Imran Khan to verify if the former prime minister received four bullets in his leg during a failed assassination attempt.
“If it is proven that he did got shot four times, I will leave politics forever,” he told reporters here.
Sanaullah, a veteran politician from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), demanded a “fair medical checkup” of the ousted prime minister, who has alleged that the current Pakistan government plotted to assassinate him.
“I was hit by 4 bullets,” Khan, 70, said in his address to the nation from a hospital in Lahore on November 4, a day after he was shot during a rally in Punjab province.
Khan sustained a fracture to his right leg due to stray bullet wounds, Dr. Faisal Sultan, who treated him told reporters. Sultan displayed X-rays showing the fracture in Khan’s right leg, and bullet fragments that were lodged in two sides of his thigh.
Without offering evidence, Khan has blamed Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif, Interior Minister Sanaullah and Major General Faisal Naseer, a senior intelligence official, for plotting to kill him.
Prime Minister Sharif, Sanaullah and the Pakistan Army have dismissed Khan’s allegations.
Sanaullah also told reporters that the government was ready to become a part of the investigations into the attack on Khan, the chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
He said that the federal government was prepared to face PTI marchers in Islamabad.
He accused the Punjab government, led by PTI, of facilitating protesters, adding that the provincial authorities were instigating a chunk of people to demonstrate.
“PTI has already wasted a lot of time [ ] It is too late for a long march now. But whenever they will come, we are prepared for it.”
Sanaullah also said that the reason why the PTI chief named the three people was to create anarchy in the country, adding that using the judiciary or the Army for politics was “devastating for the country”.
Khan’s march on the capital, demanding fresh elections, was suspended after the shooting last week, but is due to resume on Thursday.
Khan, ousted from power in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in April, says he will not join it while he recovers from his injuries.
The government has rejected Khan’s demand for fresh elections, which are due only after August next year.
The political turmoil in Pakistan comes as it reels from economic crisis and the effects of devastating floods.
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