PTI's Imran Ali Shah in hotter waters as stepmother alleges abuse, property theft

KARACHI: It seems that PTI MPA-elect Imran Ali Shah's worries have just started and do not seem to be subsiding any time soon.

A day after Shah, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) member elected from the metropolis' North Nazimabad area, made headlines for publicly humiliating and beating a civilian, his stepmother has stepped forward with serious allegations, including abuse and snatching rightful property.

In a video uploaded on social media, Professor Dr Rehana Shah, the alleged maltreater's stepmother and wife of Dr Muhammad Ali Shah, the late former minister of sports for Sindh, claimed that the biggest challenge she faced after her marriage was that the children from her new spouse's previous wife — Imran and Junaid Ali Shah — never accepted their father's second wife.

Dr Rehana, an orthopaedic surgeon by profession, explained that she had married the late provincial minister Dr Muhammad Ali Shah in 1989 and that with him, she had a son named Mustafa Ali Shah.

She alleged that in the past, Imran Ali Shah had "entered the surgeon room in A.O. Clinic [in Karachi's Nazimabad] with his guards and subjected me to brutality", whereafter he used verbally abused her.

The PTI MPA-elect had then gone on to threaten Dr Rehana, she claimed, that if she didn't "leave A.O. Clinic, we will harm you and your son". In her video, she commented that she had her son, Mustafa Ali Shah, relocate to the United States due to the threats made by Imran Ali Shah.

When Dr Muhammad Ali Shah, her husband, passed away later, she was in the US with her son but was not allowed to join in the funeral, she lamented in the video clip.

Later, upon her return from the US to Pakistan, she claimed that she discovered that both of her stepsons, Imran and Junaid Ali Shah, had submitted a "false will" to the Sindh High Court, wherein they had claimed that only the two of them were the rightful owners of the late provincial minister's estate.

She further explained that her two stepsons had the District Central prepare false divorce papers, which state that the said divorce between Dr Rehana and the late minister took place in 1994. Interestingly, however, she said Mustafa, her son with Dr Muhammad Ali Shah, was born in 1996.

"I have Mustafa Ali Shah's birth certificate, which mentions Dr Muhammad Ali Shah's name as the father," she stated in the video, adding that she was fighting her case in the courts but was "scared for my life, especially after Imran Ali Shah became an MPA".

"I'm very fearful for myself and my son. Anything may happen to me or my son any time."

It was in this regard that Dr Rehana appealed to Imran Khan, the PTI chief and Prime Minister-in-waiting, to help get her justice.

"If you really are the chief of the PTI, please get us our rights. I have all evidence and legal documents but we are being deprived of our rights."