LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) turned down Pervez Elahi’s request to stop the police from arresting him.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader asked for this when the LHC heard his son Rasikh Elahi’s complaint about the police raid on his house last week.
Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar also sent notices to the head of the Punjab Police and the head of the Anti-Corruption Establishment while the hearing was going on.
The court also asked for information about the cases against the former chief minister of Punjab and put off the hearing until May 8.
The rejection from LHC came just hours after police raided Elahi’s home in Gujrat. This happened two days after they did the same thing at his home in Lahore.
The police searched the Gujrat home of the former CM, Kunjah House, for a short time. The anti-corruption department, which involved in the Lahore raid, denied any involvement.
In the raid on Friday night, anti-corruption and police officers used an armoured vehicle to break through the main gate of the PTI president’s home in Gulberg and arrest 19 people, most of whom were his employees.
Terrorism Charges
The former chief minister was also charged with terrorism for “attacking” the police during the late-night raid.
The federal government had taken a step back from the police raid and blamed the move on the provincial government.
The police move happened just a few hours before the PTI and the coalition of parties in power in the Centre met for important talks about elections. The opposition party had already said that if the arrests and raids didn’t stop, the talks could fall apart.
Moonis Elahi, the son of the former CM, said that he let the police into the building even though they didn’t have a search warrant to do so.
Moonis told the press that the Punjab Police had searched his father’s home in a similar way in the past.
Sources told that six to seven police stations worked together to block off the area before the raid.
But the police officers got in by climbing the walls. They said that their repeated door knocks went unanswered, so they had no choice but to do this.
