ISLAMABAD: A dramatic scene was witnessed outside the Supreme Court after the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz’s (PML-N) leader Anusha Rahman allegedly snatched mobile phone of a journalist, Azam Gill, working for a private TV channel.
Reportedly Azam Gill snapped the IT Minister while she was whispering with Railways Minister Saad Rafiq in the lobby of the Supreme Court.
Anusha Rahman allegedly snatched the phone and deleted the video. According to reports, she threatened the reporter with 14-year imprisonment.
Journalists lodged protest against Minister for IT Anusha Rehman’s action and raised slogans during media talk of PML-N’s leaders.
The protesting journalists, who accused Anusha Rehman, minister of state for IT, of unlawfully seizing journalist Azam Gill’s phone and threatening him with 14 years in prison, refused to let Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique address the government’s daily press conference on the Panamagate case, shouting him down despite his repeated attempts to speak.
The phone was later returned to the journalist, but the protestors took issue with the ‘harassment’ of one of their peers.
Saad Rafique attempted to defuse the situation by appealing that the journalists exercise restraint and let the government address the issue in due time. He conceded that it was inappropriate that a journalist’s phone had been seized, but also pointed out that regulations do not allow individuals to shoot videos within court premises and that the journalist should not have done so.
Marriyum Aurangzeb, the minister of state for information and broadcasting, took over after Rafique’s attempts to contain the situation failed, asking the protesting journalists to resolve the matter in a separate meeting in her office.
However, there was no let-up in the sloganeering and jeering, as the journalists would not allow the government to speak before Anusha Rehman was summoned and the ‘injustice’ was addressed then and there.
When Rafique attempted to plow through the briefing, the press corps broke up, with a large number of journalists and camera crews rising up and refusing to cover the proceedings.
Rahman, in a later press conference, claimed that she seized the phone because the journalist in question was “secretly filming” her. INP
