ISLAMABAD: Over a month has passed since the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf claimed that its offices in Lahore and Karachi were raided and their record taken away, but neither an FIR has been lodged so far nor a court moved in this connection.

This correspondent tried to get an update from PTI Central Finance Secretary Siraj Ahmad, but one of his mobile phones was switched off while the other number sounded inaccessible continuously. “Yes, it is a fact that our party offices were raided/ransacked on May 15-16 while our Karachi office remains sealed,” said Muhammad Arshad, manager of PTI Central Secretariat here, when The News approached him on his mobile phone. When reminded that didn’t the Central Office maintain a consolidated record, he replied in affirmative but hastened to add that they needed more detailed information from the provincial chapters regarding the funding record of 2008-2013. “We also have access problem to our laptop data,” he claimed.

To a question, he said they were in the process of moving a court on this matter. Arshad had been appearing before the Election Commission of Pakistan during the hearing of the PTI foreign funding case, which was filed in November 2014 by former PTI information secretary and founding member Akbar S Babar. The commission announced its judgement on August 02 last year, establishing from the available record that the PTI had received funds from prohibited sources, which the party denies and insists no wrongdoing was committed and everything was duly audited.

The manager said they had not been able to file an application or lodge and FIR so far because of prevailing circumstances. The lawyer said the PTI was being cornered and they were trying to get record from different sources to prepare response to the ECP’s show-cause notice about forfeiture of the party’s prohibited funds. On this basis, he had sought more time and the ECP had given one month to the PTI to file a reply to the notice served on the party through its Chairman Imran Khan, following the commission’s consensus judgement in the almost eight-year-old PTI foreign funding case.

The lawyer had argued that the situation was very serious as PTI offices were closed and its office-bearers had gone underground. And, when ECP Member from Sindh Nisar Ahmad Durrani observed that both the counsel and the commission had the record in their possession, the lawyer contended that more documents had been arranged from abroad. The CEC had pointed out that the case in hand pertained to forfeiture of prohibited funding and that the main case had already been decided by the commission.