New Delhi: Former Pakistan prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan’s arrest Tuesday in connection with the Al-Qadir trust case is not the first time a serving or former premier of the country has been taken into custody.
From Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who had once vowed that “we (Pakistan) will eat grass, we will even go hungry but we will get our (nuclear) bomb” to counter India to late Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the neighbouring country has had a history of imprisoning its PMs.
Even Shehbaz Sharif, the current Pakistan prime minister, was arrested in September 2020 in a money laundering case. At the time of arrest, he was the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly of Pakistan.
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Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy
Huseyn, the fifth PM of Pakistan from 1956 to 1957, was arrested in 1962 after he refused to endorse General Ayub Khan’s coup in 1958 when the latter snatched power from the first President of Pakistan Iskander Mirza.
Consequently, Huseyn was put in jail in 1962 under the 1952 Security of Pakistan Act and put in solitary confinement in Karachi’s Central Jail. He was also banned from taking part in politics in Pakistan.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto replaced General Yahya Khan as President of Pakistan in 1971. He consequently served as Prime Minster from 1973-1977. His reign saw Pakistan sign the Simla Agreement with India when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister.
The agreement, signed in the aftermath of the 1971 war, stated that both countries would put an end to conflict and confrontation. It also mandated that the two countries would solve all disputes through bilateral mechanisms, or any other arrangement they both reach.
After General Zia-ul-Haq usurped power through a military coup in July 1977, Bhutto was arrested under charges of conspiring to murder a political opponent.
Though he was released in September 1977, Bhutto was again arrested the same month. He was later sentenced to death and hanged in Central Jail Rawalpindi in April 1979.
Benazir Bhutto
Prior to being the PM twice between 1988 and 1990, and again from 1993 to 1996, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s daughter Benazir Bhutto faced several arrests and served multiple terms in jail.
She was first put under house arrest in August 1985 during the reign of Zia-ul-Haq. She was released in November. In August 1986, she was again arrested for criticising the government at an independence day rally in Karachi.
Between 1998 and 1999, multiple arrest warrants — both bailable and non-bailable — were issued against Benazir. The Ehtesab Bench of the Lahore High Court issued bailable arrest warrants against Benazir in May 1998. Consequently, in June, the Public Accounts Committee issued an arrest warrant against Bhutto.
In July 1998, the Ehtesab Bench issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against her. It issued an arrest warrant against Bhutto in April 1999, though she wasn’t in the country at the time. The warrant was then reissued in October 1999 due to her non-appearance.
In 2007, Benazir was assassinated by a suicide bomber. According to reports, the assassination was carried out at the behest of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Nawaz Sharif
After he was exiled in 1999, Nawaz Sharif was placed under house arrest by General Pervez Musharraf upon his return to Pakistan in September 2007.
Later, after he was removed as the prime minister by the Supreme Court in July 2017, he was sentenced to 7 years in prison in July 2018 over a corruption case. Sharif got bail in November 2019 to fly to London for medical treatment and never returned.
Similarly, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who had replaced Sharif as the prime minister from 2017 to 2018, was also arrested by a 12-member National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team in January 2019 for alleged corruption.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
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