Former Pak PM Abbasi manhandled by anti-graft official?

Former Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was allegedly manhandled during questioning by an official of the country's anti-corruption agency, who also threw a glass at him, according to a media report on Thursday.

Abbassi, 60, is accused of awarding a 15-year contract for an LNG terminal against the rules while he was petroleum minister in the cabinet of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

The case was closed by NAB in 2016 but was reopened in 2018.

The News reported that a member of the investigation team of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) first shouted at the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) leader and later reportedly manhandled him, a charge denied by the agency.

Abbassi was was allegedly manhandled by an officer of the NAB during his physical remand.

Quoting NAB sources, the newspaper reported that the incident happened during the question and answer hour session with Abbasi at NAB Rawalpindi office located at Melody, Islamabad.

The sources further claim that NAB officer who was said to have done this was hired as a petroleum expert and was part of the investigation team trying to gather evidence against the former prime minister in Liquefied Natural Gas scandal.

Sources added that at time of the incident the said officer got furious with the answers given by Abbasi and reportedly got physical with him and even threw a glass at him. Abbasi was prime minister of Pakistan from August 2017 to May 2018.

Sources told the paper that other NAB officers brought the situation under control.

If true, this is not the first time when a former prime minister of the country was manhandled. Previously, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif of PML-N were also reportedly manhandled during the regimes of General Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf, the report said.

A NAB spokesman dismissed the story as concocted, baseless and false, the report said.

Meanwhile, Abbasi and former finance minister Miftah Ismail were sent to jail on judicial remand in the LNG case on Thursday.

Judge Mohammad Bashir of the Islamabad Accountability Court rejected the NAB's request for an extension in their physical remand. Abbasi was arrested on July 18 and Ismail on August 7.