An unidentified person attacked journalist Ahmad Noorani’s wife, Ambreen Fatima, in Lahore on Wednesday. The first information report (FIR) of the incident was registered at the Ghaziabad police station a day later on Thursday.
According to the FIR, Fatima, who is a Lahore based journalist, left the house at 8pm on Wednesday evening with her children. Upon reaching an adjoining street, an unknown person attacked her car and struck the windscreen three to four times with an iron object, shouting death threats before running away.
The Punjab Police are investigating the incident, and are trying to find the attacker with the help of CCTV footage. “Police did not receive any report on the 15th, when the honorable woman reached the police station in a vehicle, immediate action was taken,” said police.
The attack on Fatima is being condemned by many on Twitter.
Senior journalist Asma Shirazi wrote, “With these fascist tactics, journalists cannot stop or bow down from writing the truth.”
PMNL president Shehbaz Sharif took to Twitter to call for proper investigation of the incident. “The incident should be investigated at the highest level and the perpetrators should be severely punished in accordance with the law," he said.
The leader of opposition the National Assembly added that these kind of attacks are tarnishing Pakistan’s global image.
Former federal Interior minister Aftab Khan Sherpao condemned the attack on Fatima.
Senator Faisal Subzwari also deplored the incident.
After the attack Fatima tweeted, “Be it politics or foreign policy, the Pakistani establishment has always created and patronized parties and groups to achieve its specific goals, which have to be abolished a few years later.”
The attack on Fatima comes a few days after her husband Ahmad Noorani published a story on a news outlet called Fact Focus, in which he exposed the former chief justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar for allegedly interfering with Nawaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz’s trials.
Nisar is heard speaking to an unidentified man in a audio clip in which he says that he’ll have to penalise Nawaz and his daughter regardless of the merit.
The former chief justice has denied all allegations and said that the audio is “fabricated.” However, after a forensics analysis, US firm Garret Discovery confirmed that the audio has not been edited in any way.
While many people condemned the attack on the Noorani’s wife, some said that it’s all dramatised and staged.
Noorani took to Twitter to delink the attack on his wife with his story about Saqib Nisar and said, “Many media persons and friends are connecting an incident of attack in Lahore with me and my recent story about Justice Saqib Nisar audio. This is incorrect.”
