An injured Imran Khan being taken to hospital in Lahore after he fell off a lift carrying him to the stage for an election rally yesterday.
LAHORE: Pakistani politician and former cricketer Imran Khan was rushed to hospital with head injuries yesterday after falling off a makeshift lift taking him onto the stage for an election rally.
Television footage showed Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), bleeding from the head as he was carried by aides through the crowd at the event in the country’s second largest city, Lahore.
The dramatic development came at the end of a day that saw 17 people killed and dozens wounded in bomb attacks in northwest Pakistan, taking the death toll in the bloody campaign for Saturday’s general election past 100.
The poll will mark a democratic milestone in a country as the first time a civilian government has served a full term and handed over to another through the ballot box.
“Imran Khan has one head injury and two spinal cord fractures,” Doctor Faisal Sultan, chief executive officer of Shaukat Khanum Hospital told reporters in a late night statement.
AFP
DOHA: A sympathy wave is likely to help Imran Khan grab votes after the mishap yesterday.
A cross-section of overseas Pakistanis in Qatar this newspaper spoke to, while describing yesterday’s incident as sad, said it might trigger a sympathy wave and lead to a larger voter turnout.
Voter turnout in Pakistan is always low, but Imran Khan’s injury in an unfortunate fall is sure to prompt people to come out in hordes and vote for his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or Movement for Justice, on May 11, said Tahir Aftab, a Khan supporter.
But Tahir Chowdhary, a supporter of rival Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), describing the charismatic leader as a prime ministerial candidate, said the incident reflected poorly on his party’s ability to ensure safety of its leader. The Peninsula
