“They tried to accuse me of blasphemy to turn the public against me,” Imran Khan said.
‘Knew about assassination attempt beforehand’: Imran Khan breaks silence following murderous attack. After being shot and injured in an assassination attempt while standing atop a container during his long march, PTI Chairman Imran Khan finally decided to break his silence and said that he had learned about the looming danger beforehand.
“I had already learned that there was a plan in place to kill me somewhere between Wazirabad and Gujrat,” Khan said as he spoke during a televised address while still being admitted at the Shaukat Khanum Hospital in Lahore where he is receiving treatment for his injuries.
Providing details of how “they” planned to assassinate him, Khan said, “they used similar methods they tried using against [former Punjab governor] Salman Taseer”.
“They tried to accuse me of blasphemy to turn the public against me,” he said.
At the beginning of his address, Khan started berating the incumbent government and lamented how his government was ousted through a motion of no-confidence.
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“The government could have never lost the no-trust move, but they [the coalition leaders] used money to become successful,” he said, adding that the PTI-led government also had the financial means to engage in horse trading but it refrained from doing so.
He said that when the PTI was in power, the then-opposition took out three long marches against the government but “we didn’t stop anyone.”
Khan accused the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and said that the body was involved with the incumbent government to sideline the PTI.
The former premier added that the ECP became a tool of the coalition government to disqualify him in the Toshakhana reference.
“In the July 17 byelection, the ECP resorted to all sorts of rigging tactics,” he alleged. “They employed all manoeuvres to discredit me, resorted to mudslinging, and filed cases against me.”
He added that accusations levelled against him in the Toshakhana case are baseless as all the records are available in the Toshakhana.
“Despite knowing nothing could be stolen from the Toshakhana, the ECP disqualified me in that case because they wanted to create a level-playing field for Nawaz Sharif.
Khan added that he cannot be compared to the [Sharif family] which has billions of assets abroad and live in the most expensive apartments in London.
He stated that the party would approach the court against the ECP’s decision to disqualify him, claiming that Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja was a “servant of the Sharif family”.
Before beginning his address, Khan asked PTI stalwart, Dr Faisal Sultan, to brief the masses about his health condition while revealing that he was hit by four bullets.
Dr Sultan displayed Khan’s X-ray reports on a screen and highlighted the details of the injuries that the party chief sustained — including a fracture — among other injuries.
