Differences seem to have erupted between the top leadership of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) over the vandalism and arson that engulfed the South Asian nation following party chief Imran Khan's arrest on 9 May.
While Imran Khan blamed "agencies men" for carrying out attacks and torching public property, so that the Shehbaz Sharif government could justify its crackdown on the opposition party, Fawad Chaudhry, who serves as the political outfit's spokesperson and Senior Vice-President, condemned the violence on Wednesday.
Khan has often used phrases like the "establishment" and "agencies" for the Pakistani security forces, particularly the all-powerful army with whom his bitter war of words has escalated in recent days.
"We have ample amount of evidence to present to any independent inquiry that the arson and in some places shootings were done by agencies men who wanted to cause mayhem and blame it on PTI so the current crackdown would be justified," Khan said in a video message posted on Twitter.
The cricketer-turned-politician previously slammed the army, publicly deriding the chief of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistani military.
ISPR boss Major-General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry had termed him a hypocrite and an "anti-army" person.
"Listen to me Mr DG ISPR... you were not even born when I was representing my country in the world and earning a good name for it. You should be ashamed of yourself for calling me a hypocrite and anti-army," the former Pakistan Prime Minister who was at the helm of the Pakistan government from August 2018 to April 2022 said on Saturday.
However, Chaudhry took a different view from Khan, as he condemned the violence in the strongest words possible.
Calling the events that shook Pakistan after Khan's arrest "extremely shameful", the former federal minister went on to praise the country's army, an institution Khan has been criticizing vociferously of late.
"Pakistan exists because the Pakistan Army exists and we must devise our policies keeping this point of view at the front," the politician said to journalists in the national capital.
The PTI spokesperson even demanded strict punishment for all those involved in ransacking military installations and public and private property during the chaos that engulfed the Islamic country from May 9 to 12.
"As a spokesperson of the PTI, I think these events were very shameful. Those involved in the incidents, whether they belong to the PTI or not, should be punished after an inquiry," he concluded.