LAHORE: Pakistan’s top Opposition leader and PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif was arrested by the country’s anti-graft body on Monday after a court rejected his bail plea in a money laundering case.
The development comes just ahead of the planned protests next month by his party — the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) — to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Shahbaz, the Leader of the Opposition and the younger brother of three-time former PM Nawaz Sharif, was taken into custody from the Lahore High Court’s premises, where a large number of the PML-N workers gathered ahead of the hearing in the Rs 700 crores (USD 41.9 million) money laundering case.
The Imran Khan government last week filed the money laundering case against 69-year-old Shahbaz, who served as the chief minister of Punjab province from 2008 to 2018, and his family.
Also, another anti-corruption court indicted former President Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur in a money laundering case. They are said to have used fake accounts to launder “ill-gotten” wealth.
Reacting to the development, Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said “political victimisation of the opposition continues during a global pandemic”.