LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: The Lahore police department has prepared a hit-list of 1,000+ leaders, financiers and hardcore activists of PTI for their preventive arrest in view of the PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s call for another long march on Islamabad.
The hit list of police also includes names of 320 people who are big financiers and provide funds to line up transport, food, sound systems and other “logistic support” to the PTI during the agitation.
Khan’s six-day ultimatum to government to hold another march has ended (June 1). On the morning of April 26, while addressing the participants of Azadi March, PTI Chairman asked the government to dissolve assemblies and announce fresh polls and he gave six-day deadline to the government to do this, Dawn.com reported today.
As the deadline has expired today, the police and administrative officials have started evolving their strategies to combat the next march of PTI in a befitting manner.
Similarly, another list comprises 743 persons who are the members of national and provincial assemblies, party ticket holders, leaders and hardcore activists involved in mobilising the party workers.
The police, according to sources, conducted the exercise after the former prime minister on Sunday last asked his supporters on reaching the federal capital to prepare for the next long march, giving a six-day “deadline” to the government for announcing fresh election in June.
There are reports that the PTI chairman has conveyed to the party’s top leadership from Lahore that the provincial capital has assumed greater importance for the party to muster up massive support to inject some strength into the agitation for launching another march on Islamabad.
Following the call for another long march, the police high ups held meetings of divisional superintendents (SPs), other supervisory officers and the station house officers (SHOs), wherein, the officers were assigned different tasks after the final lists of over 1,000 leaders and workers of the PTI in Lahore shared with them.
The lists were prepared on the basis of the information provided by the SHOs, the special branch and the other concerned wings of police department.
He says the Lahore police have finalised the arrangements to make ‘preventive arrests’ of those mentioned in the lists in different meetings attended by all the six divisional SPs and the 85 SHOs posted the city.
The police officer further says the police will launch the crackdown on these people after receiving orders from the Punjab government.
The security has also been beefed up at the exit and entry points of the city, particularly, at the Batti Chowk in Shahdara, where violent clashes were witnessed between the PTI workers and the police during the party’s previous long march, the source says.
