Web Desk (LTN NEWS): The PTI says that Gill was tortured when he was in police custody before and that he could be tortured again if he is given back to the Islamabad police.
Gill was arrested soon after making controversial comments that the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) called “highly hateful and seditious.”
This happened less than a week after a district and sessions court denied a police request to extend Gill’s two-day physical remand and another district and session judge denied a plea asking for a review of the district court’s order.
On Saturday of last week, the Islamabad Advocate General Jahangir Khan Jadoon went to the Islamabad High Court with a case against these orders.
In the plea, the government said that Gill’s physical remand is important for the investigation of the case. Gill is currently in judicial custody on charges of sedition and inciting mutiny in the armed forces after making controversial comments on ARY News.
On Tuesday, the IHC sent a request to keep Gill in jail to the session’s court to be heard.
Earlier in the day, the district and sessions court in Islamabad heard arguments from both the prosecution and the defense about why Gill should be kept in jail.
Prosecutor Raja Rizwan Abbasi told the court that the detained party leader was “repeatedly telling lies” and that a polygraph test needed to be done.
He also said that the suspect’s cell phone records were needed by the police because they could lead to more evidence.
“We haven’t looked into the person who allegedly approved the suspect’s (Gill’s) script, which led him to say things that were against the law,” the police said.
The prosecutor also asked how the suspect’s statement could be “conclusive” if Gill’s physical remand was denied by a judicial magistrate.
Abbasi asked the court to let Gill stay in jail until the investigation was done.
In order to defend his client, Salman Safdar, Gill’s lawyer, asked for copies of the questions the PTI leader was asked during his interrogation.
Before filing a case against Gill, the lawyer said, the public should have been asked what they thought about his comments to see if they were seditious.
He said that the prosecution’s argument was wrong because it focused on Gill’s words being said at someone else’s request.
“Some of the things could be wrong, but they don’t fit the definitions of sedition, conspiracy, or crime,” Gill’s lawyer said.
He insisted that a person who had been sent on judicial remand could not be sent on physical remand again.
“Torture”
“Shahbaz Gill said he was tortured in his private parts,” his lawyer told the court. “I also asked him if the police were torturing him or if it was someone else.”
The lawyer said that Gill told him that he had been blindfolded when he was beaten.
Gill told his lawyer that the investigators wanted to know if “Imran Khan is an alcoholic.”
‘Judicial inquiry’
Fawad Chaudhry, a senior member of the PTI, called for a judicial investigation into allegations that Shahbaz Gill was tortured while in police custody.
Chaudhry told reporters outside the court today that the IHC needs to put together a group of independent judges to look into the claims that the party leader was tortured. “Both Shahbaz Gill and the prosecution should trust the board,” he said.
He thought that the IHC should have put together the panel, but it sent the case to the district court instead.
The former minister said that the supposedly unfair treatment of the fiery party leader was “part of a plan to change the government in Pakistan in order to weaken the country.”
Chaudhry asked the government to “understand how bad things are and think about Pakistan.”
“You can only get involved in politics if Pakistan is there,” he said, adding that the country’s needs must come first.
He stressed that the PTI would “keep a close eye” on Gill’s case if a decision turned out to be “wrong.”
The PTI leader also said, “We will make sure that [Gill] is not treated badly.”
‘Gill’s life in danger’
Hashim Dogar, who is the Home Minister of Punjab, said that Gill’s life was in danger because he was being severely tortured in jail.
Dogar said in a tweet that there were plans to get rid of his judicial remand.
Dogar’s tweet is different from what he said before when he denied that Gill had been tortured in prison.
Dogar told the media on Tuesday night that Gill was “completely fine, there is no problem” hours before he tweeted that Gill had been tortured.
“I’m not muddled. The question doesn’t even arise. No one is even willing to touch any other prisoner, let alone Shahbaz Gill. If someone does that, I will take direct action,” he said. He also said that he would meet PTI chairman Imran Khan, who has said that Gill was stripped naked, beaten, and mentally tortured behind bars, to tell him the “actual situation.”
But later that day, Dogar said in a tweet that he had learned that Gill was illegally kept in the chakki on his first night in prison. He also said that this shouldn’t happen to any prisoner.
“I have told the right people that the DIG and Superintendent should be fired,” he said.
