Fawad Chaudhry's arrest 'not politically motivated': Marriyum Aurangzeb

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb on Wednesday said that the arrest of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Fawad Chaudhry was not politically motivated as he was arrested for “threatening” Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) officials for “just doing their duty”.

Addressing a press conference, the minister said that if the coalition government led by her party, the PML-N, were to take political revenge, “all PTI leaders would have been in jail by now” but the ruling coalition has no such desire.

Marriyum Aurangzeb said that PTI leadership has attacked every state institution since their ouster in the center but the PDM-coalition has tolerated it and is still not taking any sort of political revenge, adding that this case against Fawad Chaudhry was registered by an ECP official Omar Hameed not the government.

The minister maintained that PTI, during its reign in the center, not only victimised its political opponents but journalists and businessmen too for political revenge but the PDM government, despite enjoying the same power, is not interested in doing the same with PTI.

Marriyum Aurangzeb also showed media a clip of Fawad Chaudhry’s presser claiming that the PTI leader openly threatened ECP officials and their families which led to his arrest.

The minister assured media that Fawad Chaudhry will be treated as per law.

Plea challenging Fawad Chaudhry’s arrest dismissed

It is pertinent to note here that PTI Fawad Chaudhry, who was arrested in morning after registration of FIR against him in Islamabad’s Kohsar police station.

He was later presented in Lahore High Court in the evening, where Justice Tariq Saleem Sheikh dismissed the plea filed by PTI challenging his arrest by saying that earlier it was a habeas corpus case but now that the FIR is registered, the arrest doesn’t falll in the category of habeas corpus.