Dar questions PTI's claims of deaths, slams leadership for abandoning workers

• Dar dubs indiscriminate firing stories as "malicious".
• "Where are the graves and the bodies?" questions FM.
• Lambasts PTI for "lies-based narrative of state brutality".
  

ISLAMABAD: Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar has dismissed PTI's claims of protester deaths during the Islamabad crackdown, criticising its leaders for abandoning workers and demanding evidence of fatalities, The News reported.

"Stories about gunshot wounds and indiscriminate firing by the law enforcement authorities are malicious and absolutely false. Where are the graves and the bodies?" said the foreign minister in a post on X.

His remarks come a day after PTI announced plans to file cases against the government’s top officials, including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, over the alleged killing of supporters protesting in the federal capital and demanding the release of incarcerated party founder Imran Khan.

"The government has been trying to conceal the facts and whoever is coming forward to expose them is being arrested," said PTI spokesperson Sheikh Waqas Akram said while addressing a press conference in Peshawar.

Flanked by National Assembly Opposition Leader Omar Ayub, Akram said that they would file first information reports (FIRs) against the PM, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, and Information Minister Attaullah Tarar over "protesters' deaths".

The party spokesperson, while slamming the government for "denying the facts", claimed that at least 12 people were killed on the spot and the bodies were not handed over to the relatives.

The incumbent government has categorically denied that law enforcement agencies (LEAs) opened fire on PTI protesters or that any fatalities occurred. Criticising PTI leadership, Dar accused the party leaders of abandoning their workers and fabricating "a ridiculous narrative based on lies about state brutality."

"The so-called protesters came armed with heavy ammunition and tear gas canisters. The mob was determined to create chaos and was ready to kill. Our security and law enforcement agencies exercised maximum restraint with patience despite deaths within their ranks," he said.

Separately, PML-N parliamentary leader in Senate and Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Irfan Siddiqui took strong exception to PTI leader Sardar Latif Khosa's statement on the November 26 protest call saying that "if a lie is made into a political weapon, there is no limit to it".

Slamming Khosa for alleging that 278 PTI workers were killed by the LEAs, Siddiqui said: Does the incompetent group, which shames Pakistan globally by spreading unfathomable lies, deserve to be called a political party?"

A day earlier, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif also censured the PTI for launching a third onslaught on the Centre.

"Security personnel were martyred during the PTI’s protest, but no evidence was found suggesting the death of any citizen," he noted.

Meanwhile, speaking at a press conference, information minister Tarar on Saturday vowed expedited trial and severe punishments for the "miscreants" involved in recent violent protests and pointed out that the PTI had not been able to present a single picture or video of the firing.

The PTI leaders, he pointed out, presented contradictory figures about the death of protesters, but PIMS and Polyclinic hospitals said that no bodies were brought to them.

"You are playing old pictures and AI-generated footage," he said.

"Why did they not share the videos of their protesters firing and throwing shells at the police? Why was there a need to bring a false narrative about the bodies?

"A picture was also shared with blood on the road in the Blue Area, after which I went to that road and made a video and showed every inch where there was not even a single spot of blood," he remarked.