General Told Imran Khan PM's Office Bugged, Unsafe for Talks: Pak Ex-Minister

A senior leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party has claimed that former prime minister Imran Khan was frequently warned by Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa that the PM Office was "not safe" for important conversations.

Former information minister Fawad Chaudhry also said that Gen Bajwa asked Khan to debug PM House by using the latest technology, as according to the army chief, "It was not safe to talk at PM House." "The army chief told Imran Khan that the points that we discuss here are recorded and leaked later on," Chaudhry said while talking to Geo News TV.

"General Bajwa had said Nawaz Sharif stepped out of PM House when he wanted to talk to him about some vital issue," Chaudhry claimed.

The army has secured the rooms of their headquarters with state-of-the-art technology in the era of its former chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Chaudhry believed.

This week, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered a high-level probe into the issue after audio clips featuring him and Cabinet colleagues went viral.

"I won't be surprised if the investigation finds the hacking (of the telephone calls) was carried out from abroad," Chaudhry said.

It is unacceptable for the PM Office to be hacked, regardless of who is premier - whether Nawaz Sharif, Shehbaz Sharif or Imran Khan, he said.

Chaudhry said he doesn't support the Prime Minister's telephones being tapped.

The PTI leader reiterated his party's demand that the government institute an investigation into the cypher. He questioned why the government and the Supreme Court of Pakistan were reluctant to hold an inquiry over the cypher.

On September 28, a sound bite of Imran Khan allegedly telling his then-principal secretary Azam Khan to "play" with the US cypher came to the fore.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)