LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-iInsaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Friday announced that his party`s `Jail Bharo Tehreek` will start from Lahore on Wednesday (Feb 22) and gradually move on to all the big cities across the country.

`The nation should break the `idols of fear`,` Mr Khan said and asked his party leaders and workers to court arrests since the incumbent government was detaining PTI lawmakers and leaders and torturing them. `We will fulfil your desire to arrest PTI leaders and workers,` Mr Khan said in a clear message to the government during a televised speech from his ZamanPark residence.

In contrast to the stance taken by his lawyers in the Lahore High Court regarding his nonappearance in connection with a bail petition, PTI chief Imran Khan explained that he skipped the court appearance because his life was in danger until the three accused he wanted to nominate in the Wazirabad case were in power.

The former premier said that he was publically telling that an attack on his life was being planned and eventually the attack was executed. Regretting that he does not see any justice happening, Mr Khan said the Joint Investigation Team (J1T) had been sabotaged and all the `findings ascertaining that three shooters executed the assassination bid have been `stolen` from the anti-corruption department` the headquarters of the JIT while the investigation officer was made an OSD.

He said the anti-corruptiondirector-general did not produce J1T record before the AntiTerrorism Court, Gujranwala. He added that eventually two prosecutors visited the anti-corruption department and could find only 11 pages of the report, which were of no use.

The PTI chairman said the country would surely head towards imminent disaster if the judiciary would continue failing to get its judgements implemented. He said that he got the PunjabandKhyberPakhtunkhwa assemblies dissolved with an understanding that the Constitution of Pakistan required general elections within 90 days.

`Being the head of the country`s largest political party, PTI, I am waiting for the announcement of the election date even after 34 days of the dissolution of the Punjab Assembly,` the PTI chief regretted. He asserted that the PTI and its workers would not let the `cabal of looters` steal the elections as the PPP allegedly did in Karachi despite having no popularity among the masses.

He said the Election Commission of Pakistan was showing its helplessness as it stated that the state institutions were not cooperating in holding elections within the constitutional time frame. This is the time that the judiciary assert its role, Mr Khan said. In a comment on economic meltdown, the former premier asserted that he was continuously telling that the `imported government, which came to power through auction and not election`, would not be able to handle the crises faced by the country. For the PDM government rulers, Mr Khan said the `difficult decisions` meant increasing prices of utilities and daily use itemson the instructions of the IMF.

`We were also under the IMF agreement for two-and-a-half-year and the international lending body was asking to increase prices but the PTI government did not accept its instructions and focused on increasing the country`s wealth by increasing exports, remittances, and tax collection,` Mr Khan explained. `The PDM government neither has any mandate nor the capacity to introduce reforms and restructure country`s economy,` he commented.

Lamenting that a mafia was ruling the country and recording private calls of politicians and others, the former premier said that his phone call with his principal secretary on a secure line of the PM Office was also recorded.

`The judiciary must also look into this practice of leaked audio tapes to uphold justice,` he demanded.