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REUTERS
LAHORE
POLICE have opened criminal cases against nearly 17,000 members of Pakistan's outgoing ruling party over breaking election rules, a statement said on Monday, as the country prepares to go to the polls next week.
The latest 16,868 cases, which the police statement said were registered in the eastern province of Punjab over the past four days, come after the party said police had also detained hundreds of members of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the central city of Lahore.
The statement gave no details of which election rules were suspected of having been broken.
The party's founder, ousted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, facing a conviction in absentia on corruption charges, was jailed last week when he returned to the country seeking to revitalise the PML-N ahead of the July 25 vote.
The campaign has been riven by that accusations Pakistan's powerful military is working behind the scenes to skew the contest in favour of ex-cricket hero Imran Khan.
The military, which has ruled the nuclear-armed country for almost half its history and ended Sharif's second stint in power in 1999 in a bloodless coup, has repeatedly denied any interference. Khan has also denied colluding with the military.
National polls indicate a close race between the PML-N and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, or Pakistan Justice Movement) led by Khan, with the Pakistan Peoples Party in third place.
