Lahore - The area outside former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan's residence at Zaman Park has turned into a battleground as police and his supporters clashed on Tuesday as heavy armoured police in riot gear attempt to arrest Imran Khan.
All routes leading to Zaman Park have been blocked.
Amid the chaotic scenes, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chief Imran Khan has released a video message encourgaing them to to keep fighting.
Pakistani police and Khan’s supporters fought pitched battles, injuring several people on both sides, a government spokesman and witnesses said. Among those injured were Islamabad Deputy Inspector General Shahzad Bukhari, the Dawn Media group reported.
The police charged the supporters with batons and lobbed tear gas shells.
A few hundred Khan supporters gathered outside his house after a police team arrived from Islamabad to arrest him on a court order, government spokesman Amir Mir told Reuters.
Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) workers started the violence, which injured several police officials, Mir said, adding, "If Imran Khan ensures his presence in the court, it will be good, otherwise the law will take its course."
A team of Islamabad police has been in Lahore since yesterday to comply with the court orders that had directed authorities to arrest Khan.
The court in Islamabad had issued the arrest warrant in a case against Khan for unlawfully selling state gifts while in power from 2018 to 2022, his aide Fawad Chaudhry told Reuters.
In October 2022, Pakistan's election commission stripped Khan of his parliamentary mandate as well as the right to be elected and appointed to both the country's federal and regional legislatures for five years after it found him guilty of selling 52 valuables stored in Toshakhana, the Pakistani state treasury, and hiding information about gifts that he received personally, Sputnik reported, quoting Pakistani media.
A district and sessions court in Islamabad reserved its verdict on Monday against Khan, who had filed a petition asking for an exemption from the hearing in the Toshakhana case against him, The News International, reported.
Khan called on his supporters to stand up for the supremacy of law and fight for true independence.
"Police have come to arrest and send me to jail," he said in a video recorded statement posted by his Twitter handle. "If something happens to me, or sent to jail, or they kill me, you've to prove that this nation will continue to struggle even without Imran Khan."
The PTI's Fawad Chaudhry also asked PTI supporters to gather in the streets in a peaceful protest in a show of solidarity with Imran, The Dawn Media group reported.
Several of Khan's supporters were injured when the police resorted to using tear gas, witnesses said.
Similar clashes took places last week.
"We have come here just for the compliance of the court order," deputy inspector general of police Syed Shahzad Nadeem told reporters.
The workers started pelting the police with stones and bricks, and in response police directed a water cannon at them and in some cases baton charged them, he said.
Live TV footage showed the supporters also using sling-shots and attacking the police with bricks and sticks.
"Our understanding is that the police can't arrest Imran Khan because he has secured a protective bail from a high court," his aide Shah Mehmood Qureshi told reporters.
The former premier has been embroiled in several court cases since his ousting early last year in a parliament vote of confidence.
The court in Islamabad had issued the arrest warrant in a case against Khan on charges of threatening a judge in one of his speeches last year.
He has been demanding snap polls in protest rallies across the country, a move his successor Shehbaz Sharif has rejected, saying the elections would be held as scheduled later this year.
REUTERS and ASIAN NEWS (ANI)