ISLAMABAD   -    Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Au­rangzeb on Monday said Paki­stan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan had made the Constitution, law, and judicial system a joke and insti­gated his party workers to at­tack the Lahore High Court.

Talking to the media here at the Parliament House, she said Imran Khan should be taken to task for provoking his workers to attack the court which had summoned him in a case earlier in the day. “Im­ran Khan is wanted in many court cases, but for provoking an attack on the Lahore High Court today, he must be arrested immediately,” she stressed. The minister said the court wanted Imran Khan’s presence in a matter pertaining to his ‘false’ signature on the bail petition, but he refused in the first place on the pretext that he was unable to leave his Zaman Park residence due to injury. But before appearing in the court, which had given him another deadline to en­sure his presence by the evening, Imran Khan gave a call to his sup­porters on social media to swarm into the LHC building, she added.

Once he arrived in the court, another excuse was made that he could not come out of his ve­hicle to present himself before the judge, she said, adding such tactics were employed to gain some time so that his workers could gather to attack the court prem­ises. It was an irony that how Imran Khan’s lawyer had asked the court to send a person to get his signa­ture on the petition from outside the court where he was sitting in the vehicle, she remarked. Mar­riyum asked whether such re­laxation was available to all the people who were summoned by the same court and whether special hearings would also be arranged for them.

A layman, she said, did not have all those facilities which were available to Imran Khan, who at one moment requested an ambulance and at the other sought an extension in the dead­line for appearing before the court. “This is (the matter of) bail before arrest, which shows his mala fide intention that he does not want to be part of the investigation,” she said, asking how could a person present himself before the Federal In­vestigation Agency (FIA) if he did not bother to appear before the court. “The FIA says it wants to interrogate Imran Khan while the court is asking him to ap­pear before it, but he is listening to nobody in a total disregard of the law and Constitution,” she quipped. The minister also recalled that Imran Khan had abused and threatened a female sessions court judge, who had summoned him in another case but later apologized to save his skin. He used to say that the country would achieve inde­pendence when the rich would come under the law, but ironi­cally, he himself had been ridi­culing system and violating the law with impunity.

She said the three times prime minister Nawaz Sharif had pre­sented himself before the court despite knowing that all the cases and witnesses were false and fabricated. Nawaz Sharif was not given an exemption from appearance before the court when it was sought due to the deteriorating health of his wife. He (Nawaz Sharif) had never disrespected the court, law, and system, rather he ap­peared before the court as well as a joint investigation team on regular basis, she added. Like­wise, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Shahid Khaqan Abbassi, Maryam Nawaz, Ahsan Iqbal, Khawaja Asif, Hanif Abbasi and other leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz pre­sented themselves before the courts in false cases, but never resorted to any attack, the min­ister maintained.