A defiant Nawaz Sharif, placed under house arrest, on Sunday asked Pakistan government to remove "unlawful" restrictions on him.
A defiant Nawaz Sharif, placed under house arrest here, on Sunday asked Pakistan government to remove "unlawful" restrictions on him and appealed to the countrymen to join the opposition-backed long march for restoration of sacked judges.
Emerging from his residence at Model Town in this eastern city, Sharif exhorted his supporters to defy restrictions imposed by the government on the protesters and go to Islamabad to join a sit-in near Parliament on Monday.
"...I warn them to remove these restrictions (on me) as they are unlawful and illegal," he said in a brief address to hundreds of cheering supporters, hours after local media reports said he had been put under house arrest for three days.
"Brothers, do not be scared or worried. These obstacles are temporary. We must remove them and only then can we reach our destination," Sharif said, adding that long march culminating with a sit-in tomorrow was necessary to end injustice, poverty, unemployment and other problems.
He accused the Pakistan People's Party-led government of making all possible efforts to stop the long march.
"They put me under house arrest, which I don't accept. Everything they are doing is unlawful. Their courts are unlawful and unconstitutional. The verdicts of these courts are unlawful and all actions taken under those judgements are unconstitutional," Sharif said.
Reports said police had blocked all roads in Model Town to bar Sharif from leaving the area.
Orders were also issued for the detention of PML-N president and former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif.
After a cat-and-mouse game with police, Shahbaz went to the home of a PML-N leader in Rawalpindi which was surrounded by a large police contingent.
Though police officials arrived at the home to serve orders for Shahbaz's house arrest, he slipped away from the residence and went into hiding, PML-N spokesman Siddique-ul-Farooq said.
A large number of PML-N workers gathered at Nawaz Sharif's home in Lahore and the house in Rawalpindi where Shahbaz stopped for some time.
Hundreds of PML-N and Jamaat-e-Islami workers also gathered at GPO Chowk in Lahore despite police's efforts to drive them away by firing teargas. There were also scuffles between policemen and stick-wielding protesters.
Dissident PPP leader Aitzaz Ahsan, a key player in the lawyers' movement, too was put under house arrest.
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