Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has directed Federal Minister for Climate Change Mushahidullah Khan to submit an explanation for his comments in which he had claimed that some high ranking military officers had tried to stage a coup at the height of last year’s protests in Islamabad.
According to a spokesperson for the government, Nawaz denied Mushahidullah’s claims of a tape bearing high-ranking officers’ recordings detailing their plot, adding that no such tape ever existed.
DG Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Asim Bajwa, in a tweet on Twitter, termed any reports about a “tape” as baseless rumors.
Mushahidullah, in an interview with the BBC, claimed that the former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief had hatched a conspiracy to oust both Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif and the prime minister at the height of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) 120-day long protest in Islamabad.
The minister had claimed to have a recording tape by a top civil intelligence agency that had helped foil that plan. This recording, Mushahidullah claimed, had been presented to the premier, who had subsequently passed it on to the army chief.