LAHORE - Vehemently denying PML-N leadership’s claims that the government has disallowed former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to receive home-cooked food in his jail cell, Punjab Chief Minister’s spokesman said on Tuesday that the imprisoned leader is still enjoying the concession although what he is being provided by the family doesn’t suit a heart patient who is in his seventies and has a valve blocked.
At a news conference Dr Shehbaz Gill said that the PML-N leader was being served various dishes of mutton which doctors would not advise a heart patient to take.
The government is thinking of calling a diabetes expert and a nutritionist to examine the kind of food being provided by his family, he said.
To substantiate his point that Nawaz Sharif was consuming the food coming from home, Dr Gill said that even on Tuesday he had been given mutton mixed with bitter gourd, mutton curry, bitter gourd and white rice.
About the medical facilities available to the former Prime Minister, he said that 21 cardiologists were there to look after him, which is a facility not available to anyone else in the country.
According to him the jail was like a cardiac hospital for Mr Sharif.
He defended over a dozen PML-N MPAs’ recent meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan, and disclosed that another 31 belonging to the same party were in contact with the government.
He said that very fact that the PML-N MPAs met the Prime Minister after the approval of the new budget was sufficient to prove that the government had no intention to use their votes.
These legislators, he said, were fed up with the policies of the PML-N leadership and wanted the government to do something for the development of their constituencies.
The ‘visitors’, he said, had also made it clear that they would “not” vote for the government on any issue and stay in their party.
Dr Gill was critical of the PML-N leadership for holding the government responsible for the arrest of MNA Rana Sanaullah.
The former Law Minister, the spokesman said, had been arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Force which was an autonomous organisation.
The Opposition party was unnecessarily politicising the matter, he alleged.
The spokesman said that Hussain Nawaz, the elder son of the former Prime Minister, had fled to London and gone into hiding in a country which the government was well aware of the situation.
“You have to come back and pay whatever you have looted”, he said.