Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan was relatively unperturbed by the leaked audio in which he is heard discussing with his then-principal secretary Azam Khan the alleged cipher sent by US diplomat Donald Lu.

In an informal chat with reporters, he said that the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was behind the audio leak. “It is a good thing that the audio was leaked… I’d have preferred if they had leaked the cipher.”

When asked about the contents of the converastion, in which Imran instructs his principal secretary that the issue of the cipher need to be given traction, he replied:

“I haven’t even started playing on (the issue of the cipher),” he said, adding that once they bring the contents of the cipher to light, then “we will play”.

The leaked audio is the latest in a series of such clips that have surfaced and shared widely. Earlier, a converastion between PM Shehbaz Sharif and his niece Maryam was leaked as well as another in which the premier is being advised against importing machinery from India for Maryam’s son-in-law as it would result in a lot of criticism.

A user claiming to be a hacker with the handle IndiShell had claimed on the Dark Web that he was in possession of 8gb of data containing 100 hours of conversation. The account demanded payment in Bitcoin to stop them from releasing the audio files. However, it disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared without making the overwhelming majority of the audios public.