After Cipher Arrest, Ex-Pak PM Imran Khan Now Held in Toshakhana, Al-Qadir Cases – News18

Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan, who is already imprisoned in the cipher case, has now been arrested by the country’s top anti-corruption office in the Al-Qadir Trust case and Toshakhana gifts case. Khan was arrested on Monday by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) after an accountability court judgeratified the arrest warrants and directed the Adiala Jail superintendent to execute them, the Dawn newspaper reported.

His arrest in the Al-Qadir Trust case came when a NAB team, executed warrants through the Adiala jail superintendent in Rawalpindi on Monday. It said the execution of the arrest warrants meant that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Khan, was also arrested in Toshakhana, Al-Qadir cases.  He would be investigated in jail by an NAB team after obtaining his physical remand from a court of law.

The 71-year-old cricketer-turned-politician has been lodged in the Adiala Jail in connection with the cipher case, months after his arrest in August. The Ali-Qadir Trust case is about the settlement of 190 million pounds, about 50 billion Rupees, which the UK’s National Crime Agency sent to Pakistan after recovering the amount from a Pakistani property tycoon.

Khan being the prime minister then, instead of depositing it in the national kitty, allowed the businessman to use the amount to partly settle a fine of about Rs 450 billion imposed by the Supreme Court some years ago. According to Pak media reports, the tycoon in return gifted about 57 acres of land to a trust set up by Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to establish the Al-Qadir University in the Sohawa area of the Jhelum district of Punjab.

During the Monday hearing, the judge had earlier asked the NAB prosecutor about the status of Khan’s pleas to revive his bail petitions in the two cases, to which he replied that the pleas were pending in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) and there was no restraining order issued so far, the Pak newspaper said.

The Pak court had also issued Khan’s arrest warrant in the Toshakhana gifts case, which is a different case from the one he was convicted in August and arrested but later granted bail. That case was filed by the Election Commission of Pakistan for hiding the proceeds of sale from the gifts he got from the Toshakhana.

(With agency inputs)