Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa has taken notice of and ordered an immediate inquiry into the “Karachi incident”, the military’s media wing said on Tuesday.
He has directed the Karachi Corps Commander to “immediately inquire into the circumstances to determine the facts and report back as soon as possible”, according to the statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
While the ISPR did not specify which incident it was referring to, the statement came minutes after PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari called on Gen Bajwa and Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Faiz Hameed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest of PML-N leader retired Capt Mohammad Safdar in Karachi a day earlier.
In a tweet from its official account, the PPP said Gen Bajwa also called Bilawal “over the telephone to discuss the Karachi incident this evening”. ”The Chairman PPP expressed his appreciation to the COAS for taking prompt notice of the Karachi incident and his assurance of conducting a transparent inquiry on the incident,” it added. Safdar and his wife, PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz, were in the city to attend a rally of the opposition’s Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) when he was arrested from their hotel early on Monday morning. He was subsequently released on bail.
Addressing a press conference in Karachi, Bilawal said all top officers of Sindh Police were wondering “who were the people who surrounded” the Sindh police chief’s house in the early hours of Monday and took him to an unspecified location before Safdar was arrested.He also demanded to know the identities of “the two people who went inside the IG’s house” and where they allegedly took the police chief at around 4am. ”I demand of DG ISI Faiz Hameed and Chief of Army Staff Gen Bajwa to investigate your institution [and] how it is operating in this province,” the PPP leader said, adding that the provincial government will carry out its own inquiry. He said the advice to carry out Safdar’s arrest in that manner was “wrong” and could damage the armed forces’ “institutional integrity”. Following Safdar’s arrest, a purported voice message by PML-N leader and former Sindh governor Muhammad Zubair was shared by a journalist in which Zubair alleged that the inspector general of police was kidnapped and forced to register the first information report against Maryam, her husband Safdar and 200 others for violating the sanctity of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum.
Source: dawn.com
