Never thought for a moment that PPP was behind Safdar’s arrest: Maryam
PML-N’s vice-president Maryam Nawaz and JUI-F chief chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman are addressing a press conference in Karachi — hours after retired Captain Mohammad Safdar was arrested.
“Police broke my room door at the hotel I was staying at in Karachi and arrested Capt Safdar,” Maryam had said via tweet early morning. According to her, she was sleeping when the police allegedly “barged in”.
At the press conference, she narrated the order in which the arrest took place.
“We reached home late after the jalsa. We were sleeping when early in the morning I thought I heard someone’s door being knocked on loudly. I woke up my husband and said the loud knocks were on our door.
“Safdar opened the door and police were standing outside who said we are here to arrest you. Safdar told them he’ll change and take his medicine, since he is diabetic, but they broke down the door and came inside.
“Safdar asked them to not enter since I [his wife] was inside but they did and arrested him,” she said.
The government is trying to give the impression that the Sindh government is behind this, said Maryam, “but Bilawal had called me and he was very angry”.
“Sindh chief minister also called me and said that he never expected that something like this would happen with me,” said Maryam. “I never thought even for a moment that PPP was behind this; they [PTI] thought they can drive a wedge between PDM — we know things like this would happen, we are ready as well.”
‘Shameful act’
Rehman said the manner in which the arrest was carried out was shameful. “Is this the respect for a woman in our society?”
“This is a government of force, of oppression which does not consider itself bound to the law and the Constitution,” said Rehman alongside Maryam.
He said after only two public meetings by the opposition, the PTI-led government appears unnerved. “Their [PTI] days are numbered.”
Rehman, who is heading PDM, said that this arrest was “done through a conspiracy to create differences between PML-N and PPP” but the government failed to create a rift between the opposition parties.
“This attack is not on Maryam but on entire PDM. Maryam is a guest of the Sindh government […] PPP chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has regretted this act.”
He demanded that Safdar should be released forthwith and those who took the law in their hands should apologise.
Addressing the press conference alongside Rehman, PPP leader Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said no society could allow such a “shameful” act.
He said the act of “barging into the room of members of a respectable family” while they were sleeping could not be condemned enough.
He said Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah was “kept uninformed” of this act, which showed the PTI government was “panicking”.
According to Ashraf, Bilawal and PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari had expressed sadness over the incident. He said Maryam was a guest of Sindh.
He said Bilawal had asked Shah to hold a “complete investigation” into the incident, adding that the details of the inquiry will be presented before the nation.
Arrest after PDM rally
Early Monday morning, Captain Safdar was taken into custody by the police. According to Maryam, she was sleeping when the police allegedly “barged” into her and Safdar’s hotel room.
The arrest comes after a first information report (FIR) was registered against Maryam, Safdar and 200 others for violating the sanctity of the Quaid’s mausoleum. The complainant, Waqas Ahmed, alleged that the PML-N leaders, along with 200 of their followers, reached the Quaid’s grave where Safdar jumped over the grill surrounding it.
Workers and supporters of PML-N accorded a historic welcome to Maryam Nawaz when she arrived in the metropolis on Sunday afternoon to attend PDM’s second power show.
At the public meeting, she called Prime Minister Imran Khan a “coward” and accused him of using the armed forces for his face-saving and declaring opponents as traitors only to save his skin and hide incompetence.