Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan arrested in Toshakhana, Al-Qadir corruption cases

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is already imprisoned for the cipher case, has also been arrested in two more cases: Al-Qadir Trust case and Toshakhana gifts case. According to a report by Dawn, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) arrested Khan on Monday after Accountability Court Judge Mohammad Bashir ratified the arrest warrants and directed the Adiala Jail superintendent to execute them, the Dawn newspaper reported. On Monday, Khan was also arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust case after a NAB team issued arrest warrants against him. It said the execution of the arrest warrants meant that Khan, former Prime Minister and chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, was also arrested in Toshakhana, Al-Qadir cases. He would be investigated in jail by a NAB team after obtaining his physical remand from a court of law. Khan, 71, 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 Rs 50 billion, 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. Reportedly, 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 hearing on Monday, 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. With inputs from PTI