Islamabad- Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan had agreed to change the protest location from D-chowk to a venue on the outskirts of Islamabad, but his wife Bushra Bibi did not accept the proposal, a minister said on Saturday.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on November 24 called for a sit-in protest with party workers crossing barricades and making their way to Islamabad where four people died and over 50 were injured in a midnight crackdown.
However, PTI claimed “hundreds” were killed in the violent clashes with security personnel.
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif in a conversation with the media in Sialkot said the government offered PTI several alternative protest locations and while Khan, 72, agreed to the proposal, Bibi insisted on going to D-Chowk, leading to the chaotic situation.
He said that while PTI’s crowd size “was good, just like anyone familiar with politics would muster, Bushra Bibi, unfamiliar with such a massive gathering, reportedly expressed concern, saying, ‘Who will go there now’, and insisted on continuing the march towards D-Chowk”.
“What happened later, she fled from the scene, escaping with Gandapur,” the minister claimed.
Asif, criticising PTI leadership, said the party leaders fled the scene when confronted with genuine resistance, The Express Tribune reported.
He compared their retreat to a lack of resolve and said such behaviour was unprecedented in any war or movement.
Asif said that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur’s vehicle was also hit by bricks as he fled the scene with Bibi.
He mentioned the leaders only managed to escape and resurfaced in Mansehra.
Addressing the deaths reported during the protests, Asif said that while PTI leaders provided conflicting reports about the number of fatalities, with Sardar Latif Khosa reporting 278 deaths, the actual figure was in single digits.
Rangers and police personnel were martyred and hundreds were injured because of the violence incited by Khan’s supporters, the minister claimed.
He praised the security forces for successfully preventing what he described as the third attack on the federal government.
He said there was a lack of evidence to support claims of mass killings and said no videos of funerals or statements from the families of the deceased emerged, nor had there been any concrete proof of widespread bloodshed.
Separately, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar said an anti-riot force was being raised to combat such situations.
The minister regretted the PTI was resorting to a false narrative of dead bodies to cover up the embarrassment of fleeing from the protest site.
Criticising the PTI for airing old and AI-generated images on social media, Tarar said it was the violent protesters who used different weapons against the security personnel and inflicted damage on public property.
Khan’s party on Wednesday formally suspended for the time being its protest in Islamabad and blamed the midnight crackdown by the authorities.
Amid concerns about the whereabouts of Bibi and Gandapur – who were leading the march to Islamabad – the party said they were at Mansehra town, near Abbottabad, of the northwestern province.
The midnight crackdown forced Khan’s supporters to evacuate the D-Chowk and its adjacent main business district of the capital ending their protest, which his party described as a “massacre” under the “fascist military regime” even as police sources said about 450 protestors were arrested in the crackdown.
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