Pakistan’s Khan shooting: Who paid for the bullet?

English author Eric Ambler: “The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.

The exact word is now being repeated by the former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is recovering in hospital after being shot in the leg on Thursday at a protest march in Wazirabad, in the north-east of the country.

Khan, 70, and the Chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), is not giving attention to the man who fired at him, rather revealed several high-ranking names behind his failed assassination plot.

When a key officials, like even the incumbent Prime Minister, and interior minister suspected of murdering plot of a political leader, it clearly reflects about the political intolerance of the certain strata for whom personal interests surpass every moral value.

It is worth mentioning that Pakistan tops the awful list of leaders’ assassination attempts as well and it has a root from the very inception of Pakistan some 75 years ago. There are several examples of Pakistani leader’s assassination attempt; some were killed by the unknown gunmen, while some others killed by direct commands of the establishment.

Pakistan has a long history of assassinations

At the outset we start with Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaqat Ali Khan, who was shot and killed on 16 October 1951 in Rawalpindi. The assailant was shot dead at the very moment, and no other information was given till today. This is interesting; despite the security officials at that time promising a full-swing investigation on the shooting, nothing came out of it. There was only one claim, that the assassin was of Afghan origin.

The only Muslim woman Prime Minister, who ruled Pakistan twice, was Benazir Bhutto. She was assassinated in Lahore in December 2007; despite being escorted with outnumber security forces due to death threats. Later, in an astonishing move, Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari, didn’t allow the post mortem of her body, which is to ascertain the guilty.

Again, her shooter was never caught, and no investigation has yet been done. The case is still open without any progress. Her son is now a Foreign Minister. The history of Pakistan gives you several examples of leader’s assassination.

Do the Pakistanis and the world remember Zulfikar Ali Bhutto? He was Pakistani Prime Minister, and was hanged by the military regime of Zia-ul-Haq in April 1979 and his body was buried before his death could reach millions of his supporters. His elder son, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, was also murdered in Karachi.

Mr. Khan is on the next list

Now, on Thursday, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had been shot and injured after receiving death threats. At least 11 close aides of Mr. Khan was wounded in the shooting, apart from one person who was killed. The shooting happened during his Long March toward the capital city Islamabad.

Imran Khan has been going on about this long march for seven days now and the entire plan was to start from Lahore toward Islamabad. Khan is looking to pressurize the government through nationwide demonstrations to hold elections in a nutshell.

Since his removal from office in April after a no-confidence vote, Khan has gained much more support from his followers after he contested for seven out of eight National Assembly seats and won six. Khan accused the incumbent government and US behind his ouster.

Imran Khan is speaking from hospital

In his briefing a day after he survived assassination attempt, Mr. Khan addressing the nation from a hospital in Lahore, said that he knew he was going to be attacked.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in hospital. (K.M. Chaudhry/AP)

“I was hit by 4 bullets,” Khan said, adding he got to know one day before the attack that either in Wazirabad or Gujrat, “they planned to kill me.”

Khan said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and intelligence official Major-General Faisal Naseer were part of the sinister plot to kill him but he provided no evidence for his claim.

Khan also called on his supporters to continue protest across the country and said he will continue his march to Islamabad once he gets out of the hospital.

Khan told his supporters to continue the protests until the three top officials, including Sharif did not resign. “This your constitution that gives you all rights to protests and the religion also gives you the right to carry out jihad against injustice,” Khan told his supporters.

However, Pakistani Interior Minister Sanaullah rejected Khan’s claim of being injured by four bullets and deemed him the biggest “liar” and asked for a thorough inquiry in the shooting incident.

Khan’s supporters protesting across Pakistan

Thousands of Khan’s supporters on Friday took to streets in several cities across the country to condemn his “assassination attempt”, and echo his demand for an early elections.

On Friday afternoon, Khan’s supporters staged protests in Karachi, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and Quetta, and had blocked several roads and chanted slogans against the current Pakistani government.

Supporters of Imran Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, during a protest to condemn a shooting incident on their leader’s convoy, in Karachi (Fareed Khan/AP)

In Islamabad, protestors threw stones at security forces, in which police reacted by firing tear gas shells and rubber bullets at them. Some of the protestors were also arrested.

In Lahore, hundred protesters set the main gate of the governor’s house in the central province of Punjab on fire and blocked several roads in the city.

In Karachi, police and protesters engaged in clashes for several hours.

Undoubtedly, the shooting on Khan was a crime, and it’s the moral obligation of the government to investigate the matter and initiate legal action against those behind this incident.