... aka
Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems...
, told a renowned TV anchor (in an interview) that his persistent allegations against veteran journalist, Najam Sethi, were just a 'political statement'.
Since last year, Khan had been insisting that Sethi (who was Punjab's caretaker chief minister during the May 2013 election), had been instrumental in engineering the results in PML-N's favour by applying '35 punctures' (or making sure Khan's PTI lost on at least 35 seats in the Punjab).
Sethi has been vehemently refuting the allegations, suggesting that Khan, who was convinced that he would sweep the election, just couldn't swallow the defeat his party received in Pakistain's largest province and was now making unsubstantiated allegations and looking for scapegoats.
Sethi also lodged a case against Khan in the courts. During the proceedings at the Supreme Court where PTI was asked to provide evidence for what it alleges is a 'stolen election', Khan and his lawyers did not mention anything about Sethi and his 35 punctures.
Finally, during a TV interview last week, Khan casually dismissed his own accusation against Sethi as 'merely a political statement'. His comment was lambasted in the media and the very next day a senior PTI leader, Dr Arif Alvi, tweeted an apology for PTI's accusations against Sethi, saying the party had just commented on what it had heard from others.
Things then turned even more bizarre when Alvi was derided by some other big shots of the PTI for publically rendering an apology, so much so that Alvi then had to actually apologise for apologising!
Khan and his party have so far failed to provide any evidence whatsoever in this regard. And so haven't the two controversial TV anchors who were echoing Khan's conspiratorial mantra.
One anchor even claimed that he had a recorded tape that has a conversation in which Sethi himself boasts of having rigged the election in Punjab. Sethi took the anchor to court as well and no such tape emerged.
Things continued to get bizarre, though, when after facing severe criticism in the media and from some of his own supporters for confessing that his '35 punctures' allegations were derived from what he had heard from some other people and that the accusation was just a political statement, Khan rebounded to now claim that Sethi did not apply 35 punctures, but 71!
Though by now the media is largely treating his new statement as a farce, various political commentators have suggested that Khan has become a hostage of bad advice being provided to him by some of his closest associates in the PTI.
At least two such commentators claimed that Khan has 'weak ears' (Kachay Kaan) and he readily believes in whatever is fed to him by his close confidants in the party.