Prominent cleric and head of Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) Tahirul Qadri, on his return to Pakistan on Tuesday, said that the he had come back to seek justice for victims of the 2014 Model Town incident and their families.
In June 2014, seven people, including members of the PAT, were killed during a clash between PAT protesters and policemen in Lahore.
At least 80 others were injured in the clashes that had broken out when police went to the party's headquarters in Model Town and PAT activists resisted their operations.
Addressing the media at Lahore airport, Qadri said that he had not expected the Supreme Court's verdict in the Panamagate case that disqualified former prime minister Nawaz Sharif under Article 62 of the Constitution.
He added that after the Panamagate verdict, getting justice for the victims of the 2014 incident appeared to be a possibility.
Qadri's has returned just as Pakistan is gearing up to elect a new prime minister after Nawaz Sharif's disqualification by the Supreme Court in the Panamagate case.
The PAT chief had spent a few weeks in Pakistan in June and left the country on July 1 to visit Egypt, UK and Norway.
On July 13, after the report of the joint investigation team that probed allegations of money laundering against the Sharif family surfaced, Qadri had said that he may return to the country at any moment and had demanded that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif quit because “his crime now stands proven”.
Seperately, on July 14, an Anti-Terrorism Court in Islamabad moved to seize properties belonging to Qadri and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan after the two repeatedly failed to appear in hearings of the Asmatullah Junejo case, which pertains to an attack on a policeman during the 2014 sit-in in Islamabad.
