Imran serves Rs10bn notice to Qadir Patel

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan sent on Tuesday a defamation notice to Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel for circulating “wrongful and defamatory” information in his press conference, it was reported.

The PTI chief served a legal notice seeking Rs10 billion from Patel and to “retract his statements in the same mode and manner in which he made them in the first place”.

He said the amount of Rs10 billion will be donated to Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre.

Imran also called on Patel to refrain from making further defamatory remarks. The notice said that if the health minister failed to do so within 15 days, then he would be compelled to initiate legal proceedings.

The development comes after Health Minister Qadir Patel claimed that there was no mention of any fracture in Imran’s medical reports.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Patel said Imran “went around” with a plaster on his leg for five to six months.

“Have you ever seen anyone having himself plastered for a wound on the skin or muscle?”

The health minister alleged Imran’s initial urine sample showed evidence of toxic chemicals, “the likes of alcohol and cocaine”.

He said the former prime minister’s samples were taken at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad after being arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust case.

He said Imran’s mental stability is also questionable, as per his medical reports.

“This is your (former) prime minister about whom a five-member panel of senior doctors is saying that his mental stability is questionable. There was some inappropriate gesture,” he said.

“The medical report is saying that when we talked to Imran for a long time, his actions were not that of a fit man.”

The minister said the medical report would be shown to the nation, stressing that it was a “public document”.