Govt to petition court to declare Nawaz fugitive, bring him back: Rashid

Sheikh Rashid says Prime Minister Imran Khan will never give anyone amnesty under the National Reconciliation Ordinance

Web Desk

August 21, 2020

The federal minister said that even if Prime Minister Imran Khan gets stuck in any difficulty, he will never give NRO. Photo: Geo.tv/File

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid said on Friday that the government will petition the courts to have former prime minister Nawaz Sharif declared a fugitive and have him brought back to the country.

Addressing a ceremony in Rawalpindi, the federal minister said that even if Prime Minister Imran Khan gets caught in a difficult position, he will never give an NRO (amnesty) to anyone.

Referring to the earlier clash that took place between police and PML-N workers outside the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) office in Lahore last week, Rashid alleged that Maryam Nawaz was "trapping" Shehbaz Sharif.

"The stones that Maryam brought [to the NAB hearing] were pelted at Shehbaz Sharif's politics," he said.

He said that CM Punjab Usman Buzdar will remain in place as the province's chief executive and "nothing will happen to him".

Earlier this month, PML-N supporters and police had engaged in violent clashes outside the National Accountability Bureau’s office, where the party’s vice president Maryam Nawaz had been summoned to respond in a case related to the alleged illegal transfer of government land.

Whereas Maryam had branded the incident “state-sponsored terrorism” and said the government is "afraid of losing grip on power", NAB said it had never in its 20 years of existence ever experienced such “hooliganism” whereby its offices were vandalised.

What should have been a routine appearance before the anti-graft body turned into a series of events that ran late into the evening, with the party as well as government officials engaged in an effort to seize the narrative.

While Maryam had accused the police of firing tear gas shells and baton-charging party workers, and moreover of a deliberate attempt to cause her injury, the government had said the violence was initiated by PML-N which has a “history” of “launching attacks against law enforcement”.