Pakistani police stormed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s residence in the eastern city of Lahore on Saturday and arrested 61 people amid tear gas and clashes between Khan’s supporters and police, officials said.

Senior police officer Suhail Sukhera, who led the operation in an upscale Lahore neighborhood, said police acted to remove a barricade erected by members of Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party and his defiant supporters. He said they blocked the lanes around Khan’s residence with concrete blocks, felled trees, tents and a parked truck.

Police in the Pakistani capital filed charges Sunday against former Prime Minister Imran Khan, 17 of his aides and scores of supporters, accusing them of terrorism and several other offenses after the ousted premier's followers clashed with security forces in Islamabad the previous day.

For hours on Saturday, Khan's followers clashed with police outside a court where the former prime minister was to appear in a graft case. Riot police wielded batons and fired tear gas while Khan's supporters threw fire bombs and hurled rocks at the officers.

If 2022 was the year of popular uprisings in Pakistan, raising hope for protesters fed up with a thoroughly corrupt and repressive civil-military regime, 2023 seems to be the year when the government is trying every dirty trick in the book to kill that hope.

Pakistan police have raided the Lahore home of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan who is on his way to the capital, Islamabad, for a court appearance.

Khan was summoned by the court in relation to a state gift case in which he is set to be indicted on Saturday. Soon after his departure from Lahore on Saturday, police in the capital of the Punjab province carried out the raid at his residence, breaking down the entrance gate to gain access.

Amitabh Kant, India’s negotiator at the G20 summit, said on Wednesday that the world is too preoccupied with Russia’s war in Ukraine, and should “move on” to deal with issues such as global poverty.

“Europe cannot bring growth, poverty, global debt, all developmental issues to a standstill across the world – especially when the south is suffering, especially when 75 countries are suffering from global debt, especially when one-third of the world is in recession, especially when 200 million people have gone below the poverty line,” Kant said.

Pakistan's ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan tells AFP the government wants him behind bars in order to stop him taking part in elections due later this year. Riot police halted an attempt to arrest the 70-year-old former leader and onetime star cricketer, ending a siege of his residence after violent clashes with hundreds of his supporters.

"A little Napoleon with no Grande Armee threatens war with Russia and China while the UK doesn’t have enough troops to defend its own borders, Iraq War 20 years on and Imran Khan with the murderers at his gates

A court in the Pakistani city of Lahore has ordered the immediate halt of a two-day operation to arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan until Thursday morning.

Security forces first attempted to take the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party into custody on Tuesday afternoon after an Islamabad court issued an arrest warrant to ensure his attendance in court by March 18. Khan has repeatedly skipped hearings in a case related to selling state gifts.

Pakistan’s Ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan has held a fresh election rally in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore. Thousands of supporters, guarding his bulletproof vehicle, welcomed the former PM by chanting slogans and singing party anthems.

This was Khan's first rally in more than four months, as he has been organizing his party’s affairs via a video link after being injured in a failed assassination attempt last year in Punjab.

When New Delhi stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its limited autonomy in 2019, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government defended the move, claiming it will wipe out a decades-old armed rebellion in the disputed region.

Three years later, the same government is reviving a civilian militia, called the Village Defence Guards (VDGs), in the region’s southern Jammu area.