The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday directed Faisal Shahkar, Inspector General (IG) of Punjab Police, to register a first information report (FIR) of the gun attack on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan within 24 hours.

A five-member bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan, Justice Muneeb Akhtar, Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Mazahar Akbar Naqvi, heard the plea.

During the hearing, CJP Bandial warned that the court will take suo motu notice if the FIR of the attack was not registered within 24 hours.

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He also asked the IG, who joined the hearing from the SC’s Lahore registry via video link, why the FIR had not been registered as yet.

“Tell us when the FIR will be registered,” he asked, adding that there should be a concrete reason for not registering the FIR. CJP Bandial observed that it had been 90 hours since the attack. “How will an investigation be initiated without it? And without an FIR, even evidence can be altered,” he added.

On Sunday, Khan again questioned the delay in the registration of the FIR. He said the case should be registered against the prime minister, interior minister, and a senior intelligence official for “hatching a conspiracy to kill him”.

He added that despite the passage of three days, the case was not registered as the Punjab police were “rel­u­c­tant to register the FIR”. He expressed surprise that the police were adamant abo­ut not including the name of the military officer in the FIR but ready to nominate the prime minister and the interior minister in the case.

“Policemen requested that they be transferred from the post…[and] some other officer may register the FIR nominating suspects mentioned by me,” he claimed.