Ten members of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, who were arrested during a late-night raid on the Parliament building earlier this week, were presented to the National Assembly on Thursday, after their production orders were issued.
The raid, which took place around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, involved plainclothes personnel who cut off power supply and stormed the services branch in the Parliament building, arresting at least 10 PTI lawmakers.
In response to the incident and the uproar it caused within the National Assembly, National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq issued a decision to suspend five security employees for a period of four months and ordered the transfer of five Capital Development Authority officials to IFAD for their involvement in the power outage. Building strength.
In addition, a four-member committee, headed by Additional Chief Secretary Iftikhar Ahmed, has been formed to investigate the security breach and unauthorized entry inside Parliament.
The arrested MNAs, including Sher Afzal Marwat, Malik Amir Dogar, Ahmed Chattha, Zain Qureshi, Sheikh Waqas Akram, Zubair Khan Wazir, Awais Haider Jakhar, Syed Ahad Ali Shah, Naseem Ali Shah and Yusuf Khan Khattak, were brought to the assembly. Amid tight security measures by Islamabad Police.
Footage shared on social media platform Chants of “Imran Khan” echoed as the lawmakers, including Dogar, Marwat and Qureshi, exited the police car.
On the floor of the National Assembly, Sher Afzal Marwat, a senior PTI figure, expressed gratitude to the Speaker for issuing the production orders but criticized the police for confiscating his personal belongings, including a pistol and five Kalashnikov rifles.
He rejected the charges against him, claiming that he was falsely accused of tearing up a police officer’s uniform.
Opposition leader Omar Ayoub strongly condemned the storming of Parliament by masked men, calling for an investigation.
“The Constitution and the law have been violated,” he said, questioning how police were able to arrest multinational MPs inside Parliament and claiming that law enforcement had no legal authority to do so. He also expressed concerns about how police gain access to legislators’ forums.
In a separate legal development, the Islamabad High Court placed the ten people in pre-trial detention after suspending an earlier decision granting police the right to physically detain them.
The decision came after the Anti-Terrorism Court in Islamabad ordered an extension of the lawmakers’ detention for eight days, and rejected the police’s request to extend their pretrial detention by 17 days.
During the Supreme Court session, Chief Justice Amer Farooq and Justice Samaan Raafat Imtiaz heard the petitions submitted by the arrested lawmakers. The Public Prosecutor expressed concerns that suspending pretrial detention might send the wrong message. However, Judge Farooq dismissed these concerns, questioning the effect of upholding a physical custody order.
The court temporarily suspended the remand order of the Anti-Terrorism Committee and issued notices to the Islamabad Public Prosecutor. The hearing is scheduled to resume tomorrow.