LAHORE: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had a narrow escape on Thursday after police defused a roadside remote-controlled time bomb, minutes before the Pakistan Muslim League chief was to pass the spot in Peshawar.
According to police sources, Nawaz Sharif had reached Peshawar on Thursday morning and was travelling in a fleet of vehicles to address a lawyers’ convention when the local police recovered a 400-gram time bomb, wrapped in a plastic shopping bag and fitted with a timer beneath a main bridge near the Peshawar High Court building — the route Sharif was to pass. The bomb was defused immediately by a bomb disposal squad. The Sharif convoy was halted about one kilometre before it reached the High Court building.
However, after the bomb was defused, Sharif travelled to the Peshawar High Court and addressed the lawyer’s gathering there. Speaking on the occasion, Sharif said that the sacked judges of the superior judiciary will be restored if his party comes into power.
An interior ministry spokesman in Islamabad had stated at a press conference in the first week of January that after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Sharif’s name was on the hit list of terrorists and he should restrict his election campaign activities. The day Benazir was killed, four political workers of Sharif’s party were also killed by unknown people in a gun attack on his convoy.