KARACHI: In a clarification regarding President Arif Alvi’s statement on the cipher issue in a TV interview, the President House has almost repeated what was originally reported in the press: that the president had “suspicions” about a conspiracy which needed to be investigated.

In a press release issued on Tuesday, President Dr Arif Alvi took “serious notice” of news stories regarding his statement, in an interview with a private news channel, on the cipher, saying he has been “grossly misquoted and wrongly highlighted”.

The president’s clarification regarding his statement was met with some scepticism online and on TV shows, which played clips of the interview in which the president was heard saying that: “I am convinced that it [the cipher issue] should be investigated. I am not convinced on the fact that there was a conspiracy,” some asking where exactly he had been misquoted.

The statement issued by the President House further said: “In his interview, the president clearly said that he had suspicions about a conspiracy but, of course, certainty could only be established after a thorough investigation....He referred the matter to [the] Supreme Court not because he had no suspicions about a conspiracy, but because he ‘had suspicions’ as the matter was raised by the ex-PM of the country and an impartial investigation was necessary”.

The President House also added that the president’s position had “not changed at all since he sent a letter to the chief justice of Pakistan...for a thorough inquiry into the matter as he strongly believed that the issue must be investigated.”

Earlier in the day, PTI’s Fawad Chaudhry had tweeted about the president’s interview, and alleged that “journalists of the N-League” were misrepresenting the president’s statement, while also asking that “if Imran’s government was not removed via a conspiracy, why the escape from investigation?”