LAHORE/LONDON: Imran Khan, who was wounded in the leg in a shooting last week when a gunman attacked his convoy, has called the assassination attempt a “plot” which he claimed was conceived after the “unprecedented public reaction” to his ouster in the contentious vote of no-confidence rattled the powers that be.
Revealing details of his attack during an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, Khan said he was shot four times, with two bullets hitting each of his legs, during the protest march.
“There’s no way I should have survived it… that reinforced my faith in The Almighty.”
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan thinks he’s lucky to be alive following his assassination attempt last week.@ImranKhanPTI | @piersmorgan | @TalkTV | #PMU pic.twitter.com/F5WsVONHaZ
— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) November 9, 2022
The chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has accused the prime minister, his minister for interior and an intelligence officer of being behind the attack.
The attack, Khan told Morgan, was a “plot” after the “unprecedented reaction” to his removal from the office of the prime minister in April rattled those who had backed the move.
“So I think from then onwards, they expected the popularity of my party would go down. In fact, it went up. That’s when my life came in danger,” he noted.
Reliving the moment he thought gunshots were firecrackers before his leg buckled during the assassination attempt, he recalled his life was saved by a “hero” who went to grab a gun from the hands of a would-be assassin.
He said he owes his life to a quick-thinking bystander when gunmen opened fire, hitting him in the leg. The former prime minister was delivering a speech from his campaign truck in the Wazirabad district of Punjab when he was shot.
TV footage from the rally showed a young man grabbing the gun-wielding attacker by the hand and pulling him back.
Khan explained that there were two gunmen, one of whom was on his left side “only 20 feet away”. “The two heroes that saved me, one was this guy, when he saw him taking this pistol out, this guy immediately went for his hand and when he tried to grab the gun,” he said.
“The gun went down and that’s how I was saved. Because I would have got all the bullets on my top body (but) they went into my legs. Then this other guy tried, he had two magazines still.”
At that point, a dad, who came to the rally with his two kids, tackled the second gunman but was shot in the face and killed.
“So if this guy hadn’t intervened the guy would have fetched two magazines and kept shooting,” he said. “That really touched, not just me, but the whole of the country.
“There was this picture of him lying dead and his two kids, sitting on either side, trying to wake him up. That was probably the most awful site I’ve seen.”
The former prime minister said he was also saved because he was initially hit in the leg and “collapsed, so the bullets went over my head”.
Describing the moment the bullets hit, Khan said: “First it sounded like firecrackers and then my right leg buckled, because it was hit by these bullets. Initially, it felt like a burning sensation.
“As I was hit on my leg and falling, and as I fell, and the firing stopped, then I realised I had been saved.
“I checked myself because I was numb in the beginning and I checked my body ‘where am I hit?’… I wasn’t bleeding too much.”
He said he’s now recovering after being treated in Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital which he built after the death of his mother, Shaukat Khanum, from cancer.
He said: “I’ve had three bullets taken out from my right leg and some shrapnel in my left leg.
“So one of the bullets has fractured my shin bone, so that will take a bit of time. But I am recovering and glad – it could have been a lot worse.”
