Phone tapping aimed to pressurise judges, claims Imran

LAHORE    -    Seeking an early date for hearing of a petition regarding his leaked conversation with his principal secretary, former prime minis­ter and Pakistan Teh­reek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan on Sunday said that the judiciary should take action on the issue of audio leaks.

“Tapping the phone of the prime minister is a violation of the Secret Act; my conversations with the principal sec­retary were also tapped as I would contact offi­cers on the official line. In 1996, Benazir Bhu­tto's government was removed for tapping phone calls,” he said while addressing the party workers through video link along with party’s central Punjab president Dr Yasmin Rashid here.

The PTI chairman said that phones of PTI leaders were being tapped since the time he was the prime min­ister. Imran Khan fur­ther said that there was a law in the country on the audio tap, accord­ing to which no one's audio can be recorded. “Phone recording can only be done on court orders”, he added.

He said that he had filed a petition in the Supreme Court on his audio tap four months ago, but it is still pend­ing a decision. He said deep fake videos were being made to serve political purposes.

He demanded the ju­diciary to take notice of the audio leaks and said that recording the con­versation was a viola­tion of the fundamen­tal rights. He said deep fake audio of former chief justice Saqib Nis­ar was made to blackmail him.“We will file a petition in the court tomorrow un­der the Fair Trial Act. The Supreme Court should pay attention to the petition re­lated to the audio tap,” he said.

Imran Khan said that elec­tions are held in 90 days af­ter the dissolution of as­semblies. “It is now to be seen if the judiciary will be able to hold elections in 90 days. Audio leaks are be­ing used to blackmail the judiciary; phones are being tapped and released after editing. Maryam Nawaz had said that she had the audios of the judges,” he said.

He said that Yasmin Rashid's conversation with former CCPO's audio was re­leased after the recording.

The PTI chairman said, “Bushra Bibi was talking on the phone and her phone was tapped and leaked, and three leaders of Teh­reek-e-Insaf have been blackmailed,” he said, add­ing that JIT members were pushed back by threats.

On this occasion, Yasmin Rashid said that the evi­dence related to the attack on Imran Khan was not be­ing provided as they had de­stroyed the evidence. She said she was going to file a petition in court today against her audio leak.