Nisar admits Pervaiz Rasheed failed to stop controversial news

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Sunday admitted former information minister Pervaiz Rasheed failed to stop the controversial news published in a local daily, ARY News reported.

“The interior ministry has conducted investigation through every aspect on this matter in which Pervaiz Rasheed has been found in contact with the journalist Cyril Almeida,” he said while talking to media persons in Islamabad regarding the news being termed to be breach of national security.

The press conference was held to highlight the reasons behind Pervaiz Rasheed’s dismissal from office as information minister.

He negated authenticity of the news and also denied any exchange of hot words between civil and military leadership.

Chaudhry Nisar on Sunday said Rasheed should not have let Dawn’s story go into print.

“Pervaiz Rasheed should have rejected and directed the journalist not to publish the story. If the journalist had not agreed to this direction then Dawn newspaper administration should have been contacted, which he did not do,” he said.

“Some records involving Pervaiz Rasheed say the reporter contacted him for comments about a story regarding the Punjab chief minister and the ISI chief.”

To a query, Nisar said the recent civil-military meeting on the Quetta police training incident was no secret. The prime minister and Army chief were briefed on the fed story during the meeting.

He also announced that whoever leaked the news must be punished. Investigation was underway in this regard. The false news badly affected image of Pakistan world over.

PTI sit-in

Talking about PTI sit-in, he said it was a job of interior ministry to keep life going in the country.

He said Pakistan was a nuclear country and if a bunch of people closed its capital to get their demands accepted, it would surely damage image of the country.

“Chairman PTI Imran Khan should not establish a base of any such tradition in Pakistan that a provincial government attacks the federal capital,” he said.

He also rebuked Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pervez Khattak and said the high government officials should be careful while giving statements.

“Closure of roads by placing containers is being made a conflict between the provinces of KP and Punjab, while the containers are placed to stop a group of armed people from entering into Punjab. Huge cache of arms was recovered from vehicles of PTI,” he said adding “is it a protest or war in the making?”

He said Imran Khan had guaranteed that red zone would not be trespassed.

In the end, to a query regarding the rumours gone viral on social media regarding the prime minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s involvement in feeding the news, he said rumours on social media does not make a question and left the press conference leaving the question unanswered.