Ousted Pakistan PM Imran Niazi booked under terror act, arrest likely
A case under Anti Terrorism Act section 7 has been registered against Former PM Imran Khan by Islamabad police on the alleged threats that he gave to the IG Police Islamabad and a Female magistrate during a public rally in Islamabad on 20th August.
Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan Niazi on Sunday was booked for threatening a judge and two top police officials at a public meeting that took place in Islamabad on Saturday. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman was booked under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). An FIR has been filed against Niazi under Section 7 ATA for challenging judicial and law enforcement authorities.
Once a protégé of Rawalpindi GHQ, Imran Niazi turned turtle and started abusing the powerful Pak army chief Gen Qamar Jawed Bajwa and the establishment for not coming to his aid and watched his ouster without any interference.
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There is also speculation about Niazi's arrest shortly or in the next couple of days. Pakistan's interior minister Rana Sanaullah earlier on Sunday said that the government was mulling to file a case against the former prime minister for issuing threats to state institutions and making provocative statements while addressing the rally.
A copy of the FIR against Imran Khan Niazi.
Niazi, while addressing a public gathering, threatened to file cases against top police officials, a woman magistrate, the election commission of Pakistan and political opponents over the treatment meted out to his aide Shahbaz Gill, who was arrested last week on charges of sedition.
Sanaullah alleged the speech by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief was a continuation of a trend to target army and other institutions.
“This is all happening in continuation — from a campaign after Lasbela incident when six army officers were killed followed by Gill’s attempt to incite army ranks to go against their top command and then Imran threatening a woman judge and police officials for performing their duties as per the law,” the minister said.
His remarks came after Pakistan’s electronic media watchdog banned satellite television channels from broadcasting live speeches of the ousted prime minister, hours after he threatened state institutions and made provocative statements while addressing the rally.
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The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) in a communique issued on Saturday said television channels despite repeated warnings had failed to implement a time-delay mechanism to stop the broadcast of material against “state institutions”.
The regulator said his speeches were in violation of Article 19 of the Constitution and against the code of conduct for the media.
Reacting sharply to the ban imposed on the PTI chairman, the party said the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has a fascist regime.
Meanwhile, Niazi has said he will address a rally at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh ground later on Sunday.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/World News/Ousted Pakistan PM Imran Niazi booked under terror act, arrest likely
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