Rangers’ action be extended to Lahore, says Imran

ISLAMABAD: PTI Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday demanded that the Rangers’ actions being conducted in Karachi be extended to Lahore, where political target killings were increasing at an alarming rate and the Punjab Police had been reduced to being a militant wing of the  ruling PML-N.

Imran in a statement and in his Tweets vehemently condemned the recent killing of PTI’s Mirza Tanvir in Lahore while he was returning from the hearing in the murder case of two PTI workers, Khurram and Arif, who were killed last year in Lahore in Hamza Sharif’s constituency during the local government elections.  “These workers were killed in the PTI LG camp yet the main accused remains free to-date.”

He pointed out that Mirza Tanvir was a complainant in the double murder case and had been facing threats throughout. When he refused to bow down to this life-threatening pressure, Imran said he was murdered. 

“Clearly, where the Sharifs’ fear political defeat they simply use their gulloo force – which is what the Punjab Police have been reduced to – to intimidate and even kill their opponents. The police were fully aware of the threats being meted out to Mirza Tanvir but they failed to provide any protection or to move against those issuing the threats despite having full knowledge of whom they were.”

Imran said the destruction of the Punjab police’s professionalism by the Sharifs' had sent a clear message to murderers that ‘crime pays’ because they could get away with it. The police, he said, have shown their complicity in such target killings.

Imran reiterated his demand that the Rangers be called into Lahore immediately to act against target killers as well as the militant outfits against whom the Punjab government was either unable to move or was unwilling to act and where the Punjab police had lost all credibility as being anything more than the militant wing of the PML-N.

He also regretted that this police complicity in target killings had extended to the federal capital also where a young lawyer Fahad Malik was brutally attacked and killed by a known Islamabad-based criminal mafia who waited for him outside a police station and shot him. 

That criminals could carry out such killings right in front of a police station is not only shocking, Imran said, it also sends a signal to such criminals that they can act with impunity.  “Unless the Islamabad police reassert their professionalism, the Rangers would have to take action in the federal capital as well – given how target killings have been on the rise in Islamabad.”