LAHORE  -   JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said continued incarceration of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif even after the surfacing of a controversial video amounts to illegal confinement.

Addressing a news conference here on Saturday, he sought PML-N Quaid’s immediate release.

The FIA has already arrested Mian Tariq from Multan, responsible for making the video, in which Judge Arshad Malik was shown in an objectionable position. The judge had said the video had been used to blackmail him. Forensic test of the video, however, is to be conducted to establish its authenticity.

Fazl is in the provincial capital to meet with various political leaders to work out the future course of action.

JUI-F chief said opposition had the majority to vote out the Senate chairman. Also, he said, it was opposition’s right to go for a no confidence motion against the chairman.

Rejecting the July 25, 2018 general elections as ‘massively rigged’, Fazl said his party would hold a million march in Peshawar on the first anniversary of the polls.

“Then another million march would be held in Quetta on July 28,” he informed.

The future protests, he added, would be scheduled keeping in view the holy month of Muharram and Hajj.

Fazl said there was consensus among all opposition parties that the elections were ‘rigged’.

Coming down hard on the PTI government, the JUI-F chief said it had ruined the economy and made life of the common man miserable. “Now, he said, political opponents of the government were being arrested because the latter wanted to divert attention from its failures.”

He alleged that Imran Khan had been brought to power to blur the ideological identity of Pakistan.

He said it was regrettable that Jamatud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed had been arrested under the US pressure.

Replying to a question, he said religious seminaries were already in the mainstream and any claim to the contrary was wrong.