NZ team not alone responsible for cancellation of Pak tour: Malik

ISLAMABAD: Former interior minister and Chairman Institute of Research and Reforms (IRR) Senator Abdul Rehman Malik said none should be blamed for the cancellation of New Zealand team visit, we ourselves responsible for it.

“I have been receiving a number of messages for his views on the cancellation of New Zealand Cricket tour minutes before the Rawalpindi match and this debacle is because of the failure of our internal system since we have no respect for the state's secrecy and lack of SOP to handle such alerts,” he said while talking with The News on Wednesday.

Rehman Malik said, “We must not blame others but should announce an inquiry commission immediately to fix the responsibility on concerned for engineering an alert by an agent who has multiple anti-Pakistan masters. “I demand and request Prime Minister Imran Khan to constitute a commission under a Supreme Court judge and raise a special force for physical protection of visiting teams to work with professionalism.”

Rehman Malik said that the alert was issued based on an absconder namely Ehsan Ullah Ehsan who fooled our system sitting in Turkey. He said that Ehsan Ullah Ehsan has to reveal the facts of the attack on Malala Yousafzai and the attack on Army Public School Peshawar.

He said that the alert of the expected attack was generated by Ehsan Ullah Ehsan and it went through our police system channels which are totally unsecured and even the criminals have stolen communication sets and they use these for monitoring police activities. “We ever thought about how many will be with the Indian agent,” he questioned.

He said that the IG Punjab sent the alert through unsecured communication means to RPO Rawalpindi and this meant for the police secret action to protect the team. He said he felt Ehsan Ullah Ehsan again played a fast one and served the anti-Pakistan group and this alert landed at New Zealand Embassy and one can imagine the serious fears raised through the contents of the threat alert that was bound to result to scare the NZ authorities. “It is an utter failure of our obsolete communication system,” he added.