Shooting on security personnel in Pindi: Minister says PTI leadership cannot 'absolve themselves of responsibility'

Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry on Wednesday said that the PTI could not “absolve themselves of responsibility” after a man was shot dead by law enforcement officials on Rawalpindi’s Mall Road for allegedly open firing on security forces.

PTV News, quoting security sources, said the alleged assailant was a resident of Khyber district and an “active PTI member”. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar had slammed PTI’s “politics of violence” after state media reported the incident.

However, the PTI had distanced itself from the incident, saying it had nothing to do with terrorism and that efforts were being made to link the party to it.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Wednesday, Chaudhry said, “For years, the PTI leadership has been told not to perpetuate the politics of hatred and anarchy.”

He said that the party was told not to influence the youth with “ideas which could not be removed”.

“When a young person fills his mind with such hatred and anarchy, he expresses it somewhere in his own way. Yesterday’s incident is an example [of this],” he said.

“The PTI leadership cannot absolve themselves of responsibility by saying that they had no association with the worker,” he said. “Who trained the political workers? Who provided them with a vision? Who influenced their minds with all the information?”

Adding that the PTI had claimed the man was in an unstable mental condition, Chaudhry asked why, in that case, he had not attacked his family or party members or inflicted self-harm, but rather only attacked security forces.

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