LAHORE : On the first day of the “Jail Bharo” campaign, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, vice chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), General Secretary Asad Umar, and more than 80 other party members volunteered their voluntary arrests. The Kot Lakhpat Prison now houses the detained leaders and labourers.
During a ceremony yesterday at the PTI’s provincial headquarters, the party’s leaders and workers were presented with garlands. From Prison Road, the leaders then marched to Mall Road to demand arrests. Instead of on the Mall Road, Shah Mehmood Qureshi announced the arrest outside the Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) office, and as soon as he stepped out of the container, police detained him.
Afterwards, Asad Umar, Senator Azam Swati, Senator Waleed Iqbal, Muhammad Khan Madni, and the former governor of Punjab, Umar Sarfraz Cheema, proposed the arrest. After the leadership’s arrests, hundreds of workers got inside the vehicle carrying the detainees and some even climbed on top. Activists who had made voluntary arrests yelled slogans as the police also detained party leader Zubair Khan Niazi.
The police filed a First Information Report (FIR) against PTI leaders Ibad Farooq and Zubair Khan Niazi after some PTI members also vandalised a police car. According to the FIR, the two accused damaged the police vehicle and also threatened 80 other people in addition to the police officers. Azhar Mashwani, the PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s social media coordinator, was also detained by the police but subsequently freed. Mashwani’s official Twitter account provided confirmation of his release.
Fawad Chaudhry, a PTI leader and former federal minister, said, however, that the police had detained 500 to 700 workers.