Reality behind fiction of ‘35 punctures’ unfolds - thenews.com.pk
Reality behind fiction of ‘35 punctures’ unfolds
Imran Khan made allegations without verifying facts; UK defence and diplomatic sources say ‘35 punctures’ story is a pack of lies; Sethi challenges his detractors to produce evidence in court
Murtaza Ali Shah
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
From Print Edition
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LONDON: Former caretaker Punjab chief minister, renowned journalist and intellectual Najam Sethi has been maligned on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations that he was the man behind ‘35 punctures’ during the May 11, 2014 elections but strong and irrefutable evidence shows the whole story was a hoax and a figment of imagination of a man called Dr Ejaz Hussain.
It has now been established that not only Dr Ejaz Hussain, a UK-based former advisor to Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, was able to convince Dr Tahirul Qadri that the ‘establishment’ had decided a role for him, but also he spread a conspiracy in the chattering circles of Islamabad that Najam Sethi had fixed punctures on 35 seats to give edge to PML-N over its rival parties.
In an email dated February 10, 2014, Ejaz wrote to a few anchors in Pakistan, quoting the revelation made by Edward Snowden on snooping made by the US on Pakistan that he (Mr. Hussain) had come across “more than a thousand sources” which he had used to build his talk at the National Defence University in Islamabad titled ‘Pakistan’s Cyber Security and Outer Space Challenges’.
But neither in his email nor subsequently did Dr Ejaz present any evidence of his ‘research’ and claims “amongst dozens of interesting news clips one fascinated my eyes—which I used in my research on cyber invasion”. Again he doesn’t produce any audio or video evidence to back his claim. He suggests in his conspiracy email: “When Najam Sethi was caretaker CM in Punjab (March-May 2013) he was serving the cause of ensuring Sharif brothers’ electoral victory” and then goes on to attack the former army chief General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani by alleging: “Kayani was in total picture — he did not authorize it but acquiesced in Hinduja Brothers’ (Sharif Brothers’) favour”.
Dr Ejaz claims that on 26th April 2013, Najam Sethi informed Sharifs in a meeting with dozens of other senior bureaucrats that “the PMLN may lose 30 to 35 key MNA seats in the Punjab”. But the Punjab caretaker government’s record of that day shows that Sethi had routine meetings and briefings supervised by his Principal Secretary Shahid Mahmood at 8 Club Road and none with any of the bureaucrats mentioned by Hussain.
Speaking to The News here, Sethi said: “I met Sharifs, and the Chaudhries and Imran Khan and the leaders of the PPP and Jamaat-e-Islami only once within a week of my nomination and the only other person I met later during my chief-ministership was Imran Khan when he fell and broke his neck and was in hospital. Ejaz Hussain’s email “is a pack of lies.”
Dr Ejaz claims in his email that Najam Sethi made many “transfers/postings in vulnerable districts” of Punjab in late April and May to help Sharifs win and all his communications “were being snooped by the NSA”.
Sethi says: “This is nonsense because all the postings and transfers were done in the first week of April by Chief Secretary Javed Iqbal without any interference from me and the Chaudhries of Gujrat have already accepted on record that the caretaker government’s postings and transfers were in fact against the interests of the Sharifs.”
Dr Ejaz claimed that Sethi’s “phone-chat/SMS were recorded as Sethi assured both Nawaz and Shahbaz (in Punjabi): “Mian Sb—aye tee/penti seetan da rola aye, pur tusi k’abrao naeen—main tiyari kar lai aye ke aena tee/penti seetan wich main dus-tu-pundra hazaar votaan da PANCHURE la diyan ga” (loosely translated as: I have made preparation and I will fix punctures of about 10,000-15,000 votes in 15 constituencies). However, no tape recording has ever been produced to back up this claim.
Dr Ejaz then spins an incredible yarn about how “NSA’s head of snooping division Rich Ledget contacted his team of Sub-continental linguists at the NSA to find out what ‘Panchure’ meant. Ledget contacted the UK GC HQ vin Cheltenham/Gloucester and requested Sir Ian Lobban to find out etymological justification. Around the same time Ambassador Richard Olson was also contacted. In the end—the Bradford Chapter of GC HQ providing intelligence to MI5/MI6 on recently radicalized Pakistani-Brits in Yorkshire/Lancashire and Midlands solved the problems by considering Panchure as vernacular linguistic variation of the word PUNCTURE.”
When approached by The News,
UK defence and diplomatic sources laughed off at the allegations made in this email and then presented as facts to the mainstream Pakistan by Imran Khan and a few anchors.
They said there was no truth in this story and Ejaz Hussain failed to tell how he came to “know” this story.
Ejaz Hussain claims in his email that Najam Sethi went to Cambridge University in the late 1970s and was a Cambridge University “dropout”. But the fact is that Sethi went to Cambridge in the late 1960s and graduated brilliantly with honours and was in 2011 made an honorary Fellow of Clare College and Alumnus of the Year, an unprecedented and rare honour for any Pakistani.
Details of these awards are available on the website of Clare College Cambridge University. It’s clear that Dr Ijaz couldn’t be bothered to check such facts but it is amazing that he expects Pakistanis to believe the rest of his cock and bull story.
Dr Ejaz blasts a senior Pakistani journalist who did a programme on ‘35 punctures’ linking Sethi with the so-called conspiracy but Ejaz says: “I shared the term Panchure with my friends in Peshawar/RWP/Islamabad and Lahore; I guess Shahid Masood (Beefy) may have learnt through Brig Simon Sharaf (a PTI supporter) to him I narrated this incident over a dinner at Pooya Sb’s (Agha Murtaza Poya) place on 29th January. Brig Simon shared it with Imran Khan and other PTI workers — may be Shahid Masood scavenged it from any of those sources reported by me”.
Dr Ejaz then stresses that it’s him, and not Dr Masood, who came up with this information. “The fact remains that I used this information in October 2013”.
Dr Ejaz is the same man who has now been exposed as the man who convinced Dr Qadri that he will be welcomed when he lands in Islamabad and that he will be helped with the overthrow of the Sharif’s government and then will be given share in the government.
Pakistan Awami Tehreek has confirmed that
Dr Ejaz had no party position but he advises Dr Qadri on several issues. Video footage shown on Geo’s Apas Ki Baat has shown him shadowing Dr Qadri in various meetings in London and Pakistan.
Dr Hussain is in Pakistan and is trying to flee to the UK on 10th September (today) fearing that he might be detained and his name put on the ECL.Najam Sethi said he will welcome anyone to produce the tapes, if there are any, before a competent court of law in Pakistan or anywhere in the world.
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This news story does not say whether or not this Ejaz Hussain actually holds a doctorate from somewhere. I recall it being said that his claims were doubtful about his educational accomplishments as well. It would not be the first time or the last time that someone has taken TuQ/IK partnership for a ride.
