By The South Asia Times report

ISLAMABAD: A local court in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Wednesday handed over former Prime Minister Imran Khan's chief of staff Shahbaz Gill on two-day physical remand to police.

Gill who is arrested by the government on allegations of an anti-army statement last week was reportedly tortured by local police during their custody.

Later the court sent Gill to jail.

However, government lawyers approached the High Court and requested to set aside the lower court verdict and hand over Gill to police in custody as their investigation has not yet been completed. 

 High Court sent the case to the lower court and the judge ordered to give him in the custody of the investigating officer for the purpose of investigation for 48 hours.

Imran Khan and his party, PTI, strongly reacted to the verdict and said the court has issued the order despite they knew that the police want to torture Gill and compel him to statement against the former PM. 

“Those judges who knowingly send political workers on remand for torture despite after asking to hand over to torture him,  are national criminals. Currently, human rights violating in Pakistan. Shahbaz Gul has handed eve over for torture not for investigation,” Fawad Chaudhry, former Information Minister said.

Khan also criticized the verdict and said he is very concerned about Gill being handed over to the police.

“Very concerned about Shahbaz Gill being sent into police remand again. He is in a fragile state of mental & physical health because of the torture inflicted on him when he was abducted & taken to undisclosed location & then again at the police station,” Khan tweeted.

He added that this is part of a conspiracy to target him and his party by forcibly getting false statements against us similar to what they have been doing against social media activists.

“This is absolutely unacceptable. We will take all legal & pol actions to counter not only this torture being inflicted upon Shahbaz Gill but also any such extra-Constitutional & extra-legal actions being devised against us,” he warned. 

Khan was ousted from power in April by the 12 parties’ opposition alliance through a vote of no confidence in parliament.

Khan accused the United States of hitched a conspiracy against his government and used the opposition to oust him from power because of his independent foreign policy and refusal to the US to not allow them to use his country's airspace against Afghanistan.

Washington denied the allegations. 

Following his removal from power, the public stood behind Khan and he defeated the 12 parties’ alliance in a by-election held on July 17 in Punjab province.

Out of 20 seats, Khan won 15 seats of the Punjab assembly. His tremendous victory put the ruling alliance into shock as Punjab was a stronghold of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif party’s PMLN. 

Since then, the ruling alliance launched a campaign against Khan to malign him and target those media outlets and journalists who are covering Imran Khan.