Pakistan authorities arrest senior Opposition leader for possessing drugs

Lahore: Pakistani authorities on Monday arrested firebrand PML-N parliamentarian Rana Sanaullah for allegedly possessing huge amount of narcotics, officials said.

Sanaullah, the chief of the Punjab unit of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), is one of the biggest critics of Prime Minister Imran Khan. He had called Khan an “addict” and demanded search of his Islamabad house to find narcotics. According to Anti Narcotics Force (ANF) officials, Sanaullah, a close aide to the Sharif brothers -- Nawaz and Shehbaz -- was arrested while he was traveling from Faisalabad to Lahore.

A huge amount of drugs was recovered from his car, they said, adding that the PML-N leader would be produced before a court on Tuesday.

Condemning the arrest, PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif said the action against Sanaullah was a “worst example of political victimisation and vengeance of an individual, Imran Khan Khan, against a pro-democratic man.”

“Such acts of harassment won’t stop the opposition from exposing the ‘disastrous and despotic rule’ of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) regime,” Shahbaz said. PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz, the daughter of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, accused Khan of being “directly behind” the arrest.

“What has ANF got to do with Rana Sanaullah? It could not get more absurd. He has been arrested for his bold & courageous stance. Jaali-e-Azam (fake prime minister) being the small & petty minded man that he is, is directly behind his arrest. Make no mistake,” she tweeted. A politician always in the news because of his fiery rhetoric, Sanaullah is a former minister for law and parliamentary affairs of Punjab province.