Who were four masked men looking for Nawaz?

LONDON : Two weeks after a group of masked men tried to approach former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the office from where he runs his party affairs, neither the Scotland Yard has made any effort to find out who the four people were nor the two people who came in direct contact with the four men have registered a formal complaint to the police.

The identity of the four men - three of them wearing face masks to conceal their identities - remains unknown and the police says it had visited the spot after an emergency call was made by Nasir Mehmood (also known as Nasir Butt) but didn’t find anyone at the spot.

When the four men arrived outside Hasan Nawaz Sharif’s office Stanhope House, their first contact was with Hasan Nawaz and the second contact was with Mr Rashad Chaudhary, who works in Hasan Nawaz’s office.

“We want to meet Nawaz Sharif, we have an appointment with him,” the man in suit told Hasan Nawaz at the bottom of the stairs.

When Hasan Nawaz told them that Nawaz Sharif had no appointment with anyone, according to Hasan Nawaz they told him: “Tell Nawaz Sharif to sort out his issues in Pakistan. We know where you go for walks and coffee.”

At this point, Rashad Chaudhary can be heard in the video arguing with the four men to not step inside the private property and clear the entrance. While the suited man left the premises, one masked man wearing all black stepped inside, blocked the entrance and hit Rashad Chaudhary’s hand, as seen and heard in the video.

Rashad Chauhdary is heard saying in the video: “You are being aggressive, you are blocking my entrance, please move aside, stop don’t touch my phone, he’s being aggressive.”

Within a minute, Nasir Butt and several others from inside the building came out and could be seen arguing with the four men, questioning why they wanted to meet Nawaz Sharif and who had sent them. After a few minutes, the masked men left the spot in a car. Nasir Butt can be seen on the phone, reporting the incident to the police who arrived after 40 minutes and by that time everyone had left the scene.

After the news was released to the media the following day with the footage and within minutes of the news breaking out that a group of masked men had attempted to reach Nawaz Sharif in order to harm him, a video started circulating in which Mian Imran (also known as Imran Ul Haq in court papers) claimed that the masked men were not the attackers but the bailiffs sent by him in his private civil dispute with Nasir Butt.

Mian Imran explained that Nasir Butt owed him money and that the bailiffs had visited the office on the court order for the recovery of money.

A detailed look into the civil dispute papers, provided to this reporter by Mian Imran, shows that a dispute over the selling of a vehicle has been going on between Nasir Butt and Mian Imran for over 13 years.

There is currently no court order for the recovery of any money from Nasir Butt and no court order approving the recovery of anything by the bailiffs.

A London High Court spokesman said it had no record showing any order for the recovery of any amounts in the case between Nasir Butt and Nasir Mahmood.

“They (the bailiffs) were there only for the implementation. There is no other issue,” said Mian Imran in his video.

A day after the incident, when asked who the bailiffs were and whether they had court permission to do so, Mian Imran said that he will provide details of he bailiffs and the court papers through his solicitor but in two weeks he had no shared details of either his solicitor’s office or the bailiffs who, he claimed, were seeking to recover money from Nasir Butt and not trying to reach to Nawaz Sharif.

He has since said that he doesn’t have the permission from his solicitor to share details of the matter with the media.

Scotland Yard said yesterday that it has received a detailed further complaint from Nasir Butt but was “assessing” it but about the original incident it said that the police officer attended the scene and found nobody there. The police have not made any further inquiries. A police source said that it has not received any complaint from the Sharif family members till now and none of the two people - who first came into contact with the police - have approached the police so far.

Two weeks on, no one knows who the four men were; who had sent them to meet Nawaz Sharif and why two of them acted aggressively; the person who claimed to own them has refused to share any details of their legitimacy; the Sharif family has not approached the police and the police has shown no interest and will on acting on the first and second compliant.