Islamabad police get Gandapur’s custody

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The Islamabad police on Saturday took Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader and former federal minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur into custody and moved him from the Central Jail Dera Ismail Khan to the federal capital on court orders.

Earlier, Judicial Magistrate-I Dera Ismail Khan had ordered the authorities to hand over the PTI leader to the Islamabad police.

The PTI leader will be produced in a court in Islamabad.

Gandapur was arrested from outside the Peshawar High Court’s Dera Ismail Khan bench on Thursday and was sent to the Central Jail Dera Ismail Khan on six-day judicial remand.

The officials of the Islamabad and Punjab police from Bhakkar had reached Dera Ismail Khan to seek the custody of the PTI leader.

PTI leader and former National Assembly speaker Asad Qaiser on Saturday criticised the government for the “illegal” arrest of Gandapur, saying that party workers stood by the party’s ex-minister.

“The arrest of Ali Amin Gandapur is illegal and the cases against him had no legal status,” he told reporters here.

Asad Qaiser said that he along with other leaders, including former federal ministers Pervez Khattak and Azam Khan Swati visited Dera Ismail Khan to express solidarity with party leader Gandapur.

He said that they condemned the drama staged at the sessions court, adding that Gandapur wanted incumbent rulers to run the country as per law of the land and constitution.

He made it clear that PTI workers would resist political victimisation of their leaders so the rulers must think twice before taking any illegal action.

The former NA speaker said that PTI workers and leaders could not be intimidated with such tactics. He said that the National Assembly must be dissolved to end political uncertainty and pave the way for simultaneous elections in the country.

The PTI leaders also met brothers of Ali Amin, including former provincial minister Faisal Amin Gandapur and City Mayor Umar Amin Gandapur, and assured them of full legal support on behalf of the party leadership.

Meanwhile, the Anti-Terrorism Court of Dera Ismail Khan on Saturday summoned Ali Amin Gandapur in the murder case of former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa minister Sardar Israrullah Khan Gandapur in a suicide bomb explosion.

The ATC has summoned the PTI ex-minister to indict him in the murder case on April 11, while his brother Umar Amin Gandapur is already on bail in the same case.

Sardar Israrullah Khan was martyred along with seven other persons in a suicide bomb blast on the first day of Eidul Azha while greeting locals at his residence in Kulachi town on October 16, 2013.

One Jehangir, a close friend of the slain minister, had registered a first information report at the Kulachi Police Station in Dera Ismail Khan.