Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah has accused Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan of being the mastermind of the ‘bogus’ drug case dating back to 2019. The PML-N leader spent nearly six months in pre-trial detention while a special narcotics court continues to hear the case with the next hearing scheduled for July 23.

The PML-N leader was arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) with 15 kilograms of heroin allegedly seized from his vehicle. However, a day earlier, PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry said that the case against the PML-N leader was fabricated.

Rana Sanaullah says he has spoken as well as written to the Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa about the role of the ANF in his arrest.

The charges filed by the ANF against Rana Sanaullah carry the death penalty.

Taking to Twitter, the country’s security czar said that Imran was the mastermind, while his aide on accountability Shehzad Akbar and the former director general of the ANF were involved in framing him.

Rana Sanaullah wrote that Shehzad Akbar forced the Islamabad police to keep a 15kg bag of heroin in his lodge, but they refused to do so.

Following their refusal, Major General Arif Malik took the task and received benefits in return, said Sanaullah while speaking on a Geo News show. Major General Arif Malik is currently heading the Defence Export Promotion Organization.

In his tweet, Sanaullah said that all the action was taken on the instructions of the former prime minister (Imran Khan) who wanted him behind bars due to ‘personal enmity’.

“I have written to the army chief about the role of the ANF in making a fake case against me,” he said.

In his many speeches, Imran Khan has referred to the drug case against the PML-N leader.

His narcotics minister, Sheheryar Afridi, brought the Holy Quran to the National Assembly to swear that the case against the PML-N leader was genuine. Rana Sanaullah, who heads PML-N in Punjab, had also taken an oath on the holy book in a press conference in his hometown Faisalabad. The press conference came after his release on bail in which he described the heroin case as “the worst form of political victimisation”.

In a press conference following Rana Sanaullah’s arrest, Afridi said that the Sanaullah was arrested after his three-week surveillance and the ANF had complete and sufficient evidence to prove his involvement in the drug business.

Major General Arif Malik was alongside Afridi during that press conference, in which he repeatedly claimed that they had complete evidence.

The ANF chief and the minister failed to provide convincing replies on why the arrest and the bust was not filmed, as the force had done in the past.

During his press conference, Afridi also claimed that the drugs seized in the bust was worth Rs160 million in the international market.