Dr Asim returns to Pakistan, cautions Sharif over military tussle

KARACHI: Dr Asim Hussain, a PPP leader and close aide of former President Asif Ali Zardari, on Friday returned to Pakistan after spending a month in London for the medical treatment.

The former petroleum minister was greeted by a large number of jubilant party supporters when he landed at Karachi airport from London.

In a brief interaction with media, Hussain said that he has kept his promise and returned to the country after undergoing a medical treatment.

“I have come to face ‘baseless’ graft cases against me,” he remarked. The opponents have filed false corruption cases and dug a pit to trap others, then fall into it themselves, he added.

“My arrival is sheer evidence of false [corruption] allegations against me,” Hussain added.

Referring to Nawaz Sharif, he said the war that Sharif is raging with the military is not in the best interests of the country.

“The military leadership belongs to Pakistan. It belongs to the nation and is from among the people,” he further said.

He said it is beyond his understanding as why Sharif considers himself a true representative of the nation since Sharif family members had spent a decade abroad and are still out of the country. “It is your misunderstanding Mian Sahib that the nation stands with you,” he remarked.

London departure 

On September 10, Asim Hussain had departed for London via an international flight to undergo medical treatment.

Suffering setbacks time and again, PPP Karachi president Dr Asim Hussain’s name was finally removed from the Exit Control List (ECL) after Supreme Court on August 29 granted him permission to travel abroad for a month to undergo medical treatment while hearing his plea.

Asim’s name had been on the ECL since November 2015 for facing corruption references filed by National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

He had then petitioned High Courts to have travel restrictions on him removed so that he could undergo disc replacement surgery in London, as he said, the treatment of such an ailment was not possible in Pakistan.

Earlier, the anti-graft watchdog had said that the former petroleum minister had allegedly misused his powers by getting plots allotted fraudulently, encroaching state land for expansion of Dr. Ziauddin Hospital/ money laundering, kickbacks, illegal gains, receiving commission through fertiliser cartel for illegal curtailment of gas for exploitative price and defrauding people in the name of charity hospital.

The NAB had alleged that he had deprived public exchequer of Rs 462 billion.