LAHORE: Imran Khan and his sister, the prime minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz, as well as former president Asif Ali Zardari’s sister Faryal Talpur — it was a cast worthy of a blockbuster. But that was not to be. The anticlimax had some figure from Azad Kashmir fading away into the darkness that descended on the script that had initially looked so promising.

In the first scene, a car occupied by Mr Khan’s sister Dr Uzma Khan and two of her children was shown to be travelling down a road in Gulberg, Lahore. Suddenly — and loudly by some of the accounts — the doctor and her family are approached by an official protocol vehicle. The story as narrated by Dr Uzma goes that it was a vehicle used by official security guards, apparently to protect someone important.

Someone important in Lahore? Did anyone need a second guess to pronounce that it had to be a member of the Sharif family? And within the Sharif clan who would appear to have the strongest initiative and presence?

The first reports on the electronic media said the guards had misbehaved with Mr Khan’s sister and her children to the extent that guns were trained on them in an intimidating manner.

Dr Uzma was quoted as saying the occurrence reminded her of a July 1, 2015 incident in which her sons were implicated in a false case by police. She said that after last year’s experience she was not prepared to go to the police.

Nonetheless, she was intent upon protesting with brother Imran Khan, who spoke to journalists in Karachi, adding his own bits against the VIP culture and the Sharif family to make the attack all the more menacing, chiding Maryam Nawaz and the first family for enjoying what he called an emperor’s life on taxpayers’ money.

Later he tweeted: “Sharifs act as Royal family and treat people of Pakistan as their subjects. Maryam acting as PM without any legal constitutional powers.”

In another tweet the PTI chairman went on to say that “in no democracy is badshahat allowed. The ppl are reacting to PML-N’s vicious targeting of SKMT by giving record donations to SKMT”.

Dr Uzma on her part maintains that she was told that the protocol-security paraphernalia was there in honour of who else but the fast emerging Maryam Nawaz. With this seemingly innocent diagnosis, the good doctor opened the floodgates on statements that all sides were keen on contributing to.

In Islamabad, the PTI’s Naeem-ul-Haq pounced heartily on the opportunity. But if he reminded the ruling PML-N of the popular hazards of moving with VIP security, it was the government and its allies who held the trump card.

PTI general secretary Jahangir Tareen was quick to add that harassment by Punjab police of a woman driving on a Lahore road with her son and daughter was condemnable. He was angry at Maryam for moving on the city roads while enjoying the prime minister’s protocol.

The winds were taken out of the PTI’s sails when PML-N spokespersons confirmed that Maryam Nawaz was in Islamabad at the time of the incident.

Maryam herself used the occasion to score a few points when she first sympathised with Dr Uzma and her family and then told her to check the facts before making any allegations. In her tweets, she said she had arrived in Lahore at 4.30pm. “Liars should have some shame at least in Ramazan,” she added.

About the same sympathy-plus-sarcasm approach was adopted by the rest of the Leaguers who spoke on the subject with varying degrees of emotions put into the effort.

But just as Maryam Nawaz appeared to be an unlikely ‘villain’ in the instance, the media was compelled by its own competition and demand to find out who it actually was who had been responsible for the brouhaha. Though this remains unconfirmed, it was perhaps going over the list of the usual suspects which provided a suitable replacement of Maryam.

Even if some of us desperately wanted to, we couldn’t pin it down on the prime minister’s talented daughter. The next choice as it turned out was the ex-president Asif Ali Zardari’s all-powerful sister who according to her detractors has a habit for showing up at wrong times and wrong places.

For the next few minutes the media proudly claimed that it was actually Faryal Talpur who had threateningly confronted Dr Uzma — probably making some of us quietly anticipating the repercussions of the standoff on the likelihood of Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and Imran Khan gathering on the same container in a bid to dislodge the Sharif setup.

The situation was contained, however. It later came out that the security protocol that was responsible for all the probable and impossible scenarios was actually there to guard someone lesser known from Azad Kashmir.

As the story developed, it emerged that AJK President Sardar Yaqoob’s protocol vehicles had hit Dr Uzma’s car and his security detail had created the show that blew up into a full-scale controversy.

The great expectations of it becoming a running story for the next few days were dashed. The media and maybe the public at large was constrained to discuss it as not a battle between those who rule and those who seek power to rule but as an example of what sheer nuisance VIP movement of the exalted and even the lesser mortals can create on the roads for the ordinary bystanders with no pretence or claim to privilege.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2016