Protesters in Islamabad, who have been staging sit-ins outside the Pakistani parliament since August 14, have said that they were paid to join rallies for "three or four days" but are now being denied permission to return home. Some of Tahir ul-Qadri's supporters have claimed that they were threatened by the party leaders when they said that they wished to leave, reported the BBC.
The deputy information secretary of Qadri's party, Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT), denied the allegations by saying that all the people who participated in the protest march had come on their own accord and no one forced them or paid them to attend the rallies. Thousands of protesters led by Imran Khan and Qadri occupied the red zone in the capital city of Islamabad in a bid to topple the Nawaz Sharif government a few weeks ago. However, Khan's supporters have waned out as the weeks wore on.
