Imran’s medical reports with NAB 'at odds' with Patel’s claims

• Imran Khan's reports with NAB show no signs of alcohol use: source.
• Source says medical report shows all his health signs are normal.
• Health Minister Patel alleged Khan's reports show he used cocaine.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s blood and urine test reports, as available with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), do not even hint at any use of alcohol and cocaine.

An informed source in the Bureau told The News that the medical reports of Khan do not endorse what Federal Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel alleged a few days back.

The source said that the medical reports, which they claimed to have read, instead show all his health signs are normal.

He said that the blood and urine samples of Khan were collected when he was in NAB’s custody, and for the same reason, the reports of these samples are the property of NAB.

“The medical reports as available with NAB do not endorse what the health minister alleged,” he said.

The health minister, in a press conference that he addressed a few days back, had alleged that the medical test of Khan, done when under arrest in a corruption case, showed the use of alcohol and cocaine.

Patel referred to the report prepared by a panel of five doctors. He said that the initial medical report revealed the use of “toxic chemicals” such as “alcohol and cocaine”.

The health minister, who said the government would make Imran’s medical report public, had also claimed that the PTI chief’s mental stability was questionable.

Independent medical experts have already rejected the accusations of the health minister and found the allegation “not only laughable but also unfounded”.

Geo News’ anchorperson Shahzeb Khanzada said in his show last week that at least three doctors, with whom the report and the health minister’s press conference were shared, declared Patel’s claims to be “laughable and unfounded”.

They said that a urine sample report is usually shared within a few days. It was surprising that the health minister had taken 17 days to share the report, which was only a preliminary one.

The health minister had said that “once the detailed report comes”, it would be sent to the police.

“The doctors said that the claims made by the health minister could not be substantiated by the report,” Khanzada said.

The doctors said that while the health minister had claimed Khan was mentally unstable, the report itself claimed otherwise.

Now the PTI chairman has served a defamation notice to Health Minister Patel after the latter disclosed that “traces of alcohol and cocaine were found in the former premier’s urine analysis”.

The legal notice, filed under the Defamation Ordinance 2002, was served on account of the “dissemination and circulation of wrongful, baseless, false, misleading, erroneous, malicious and defamatory information” against Khan during the minister’s press conference on May 26.

It claimed that through the press conference, the minister “dishonestly…alleged” that Khan's medical tests showed traces of alcohol and cocaine in his urine sample and that the former premier’s “mental stability” was “questionable” in addition to “some appropriate gesture”.

Originally published in The News