Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan

• Police
  from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad tried to arrest former PM Imran Khan at his Lahore
  home, but he wasn’t present.
• Khan
  is accused of failing to declare gifts received during his time in office, as
  well as profit made from them.
• Khan,
  who was shot during a rally last year, was forced out of office in a
  no-confidence vote in April.

Lahore
– Police in Pakistan said officers on Sunday attempted to arrest former prime
minister Imran Khan, who is battling several legal cases as he pressures the
government for early elections.

Officers
from the capital Islamabad arrived at Khan’s home in Lahore, which was
surrounded by hundreds of his supporters, but were unable to find him.

“A
team of Islamabad police has arrived in Lahore to arrest Imran Khan to comply
with the court orders,” Islamabad police said in a tweet.

READ | Aide to former Pakistan PM Khan arrested for election criticism

“Imran
Khan is reluctant to surrender – the Superintendent of Police had gone into the
room, but Imran Khan was not present there.”

The
arrest warrant was issued after Khan failed to appear before the court in a
corruption case on 28 February.

Khan
is accused of failing to declare gifts received during his time in office, or
the profit made from selling them.

Government
officials must declare all gifts, but are allowed to keep those below a certain
value.

The
vice chairman of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Shah Mehmood Qureshi,
told reporters in Lahore: “We have received the notice from Islamabad
police – the notice does not contain any order for the arrest.”

“We
will consult our lawyers and follow the legal process”.

Pakistan’s
courts are often used to tie up lawmakers in tedious and long-winding
proceedings that rights monitors have criticised for stifling political
opposition.

Khan,
who was shot during a rally last year, has attempted to disrupt politics in the
South Asian nation since he was forced out of office in a no-confidence vote in
April.

He
has been pushing for early polls due no later than October by holding protests,
pulling out of parliament and dissolving the two provincial assemblies his
party controls in a bid to force the government’s hand.

The
nation of more than 220 million is in dire economic straits with runaway inflation,
scant foreign exchange reserves and stalling bailout talks with the IMF.

To
pull the country out of its spiral, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is battling
to revive the next tranche of a $6.5 billion loan deal sketched with the
International Monetary Fund in 2019.