ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister and Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan on Tuesday reportedly sent defamation notice of Rs10 billion to Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel in response to a press conference in which the latter alleged that the PTI chairman’s mental stability was questionable.
Earlier on Friday, the federal health minister shared the confidential medical reports of PTI chief Imran Khan’s tests, supposedly conducted during his custody earlier this month, claiming that no fracture was found on his legs, while traces of alcohol and an illegal drug were found in his urine sample, and that his mental stability was questionable.
Qadir Patel termed Imran Khan’s medical report as a “public document” and said he didn’t need anyone’s permission to release it. He rejected questions surrounding the moral and ethical grounds for releasing someone’s health records.
However, politicians and analysts had pointed out the glaring contradictions in the report. While the report claimed that Imran’s “mental stability is questionable”, elsewhere it had declared his higher mental function to be “intact”, clinical status “stable” and deemed him “fit” for detention by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
According to local media outlets, the notice served to Abdul Qadir Patel was sent under Section 8 of the Defamation Ordinance, 2002 for circulating “wrongful, baseless, false, misleading, erroneous, malicious and defamatory” information in his May 26 press conference.
“The press conference was watched in Pakistan as well as all over the world through electronic media channels, YouTube and various other social media platforms. Moreover, details regarding the press conference were also published in newspapers nationally as well as internationally,” the notice said.
The notice said that Imran had sustained a head injury on the day of his “illegal arrest” on May 9 but there was no mention of it in the medical report.
It said that the medical report had emphasised “a lot” on Imran’s mental state but no details were provided of an examination being conducted in this regard.
The notice said that Patel made the remarks “knowingly, consciously, willingly, deliberately and maliciously”. It added that the minister’s remarks were also in “violation of the standards and ethics which [a] member of the federal cabinet must possess.”