A Court in Islamabad on Monday dismissed a petition filed by Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan seeking to have his non-bailable arrest warrant in the Toshakhana case lifted.
On February 28, Additional Sessions Judge Zafar Iqbal issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against the cricketer-turned-politician for failing to appear in court in the Toshakhana case on a regular basis.
Khan has been accused of buying gifts for profit, including an expensive Graff wristwatch he received as premier at a discounted price from the state depository known as Toshakhana, and selling them for profit.
Khan is accused of concealing details of gifts he received from the Toshakhana, a repository where gifts given to government officials by foreign officials are kept, in his asset declarations. Officials are legally permitted to keep gifts if they pay a pre-determined amount, typically a fraction of the gift’s value.
On Sunday, the PTI chief applied to the Lahore High Court (LHC) for post-arrest bail after an Islamabad police team arrived at his Zaman Park residence to arrest him for failing to appear in court in the Toshakhana case. However, after Khan evaded arrest, the police team returned empty-handed.
Khan has not appeared in court since November of last year, when he was injured in an assassination attempt at a rally in the Punjab district of Wazirabad. After being shot during the assassination attempt, Khan was granted interim bail by a special court in Islamabad. He has since had his bail extended due to medical reasons.
Khan was ousted from power in April after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he claimed was part of a US-led conspiracy targeting him as a result of his independent foreign policy decisions on Russia, China, and Afghanistan.
The PTI leader, who came to power in 2018, is the only Pakistani Prime Minister to be ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament.
