The airing of three leaked interrogation videos of two high-profile suspects by TV channels in as many days finally caught the attention of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan who on Saturday termed the act “illegal and unethical” and asked the Sindh government to find out which investigating agency was behind the leaks.

“The cases would be decided in courts and not through a media trial,” he said in a statement issued in Islamabad.

“Such kind of coverage weakens the cases [of the prosecution] instead of strengthening them.”

But his announcement did not impress a senior PPP leader, who recalled that Chaudhry Nisar himself was going to commit such an “illegal and unethical act” when he threatened to make public Dr Asim Hussain’s interrogation video.

On Wednesday and Thursday, TV channels broadcast two video statements of former minister for petroleum Dr Asim in which he was seen levelling serious allegations against former president Asif Zardari and his foster brother Owais Muzaffar aka Tappi.

And on Friday, a 37-second video statement of Muttahida Qaumi Movement worker Minhaj Qazi was aired in which he implicated a former provincial lawmaker in the 18-year-old Hakim Said murder case.

Earlier, a video statement of Saulat Mirza, the convicted killer of former managing director of the Karachi Electric Supply Company Shahid Hamid, and another of Khalid Shamim, one of the three held suspects in the MQM leader Dr Imran Farooq murder case, have mysteriously made their way to the media.

Saulat Mirza’s statement was aired hours before his scheduled hanging in March 2015 from his death cell in Mach Jail in Balochistan and as a result the interior ministry approached the president and got his execution postponed. However, he was executed in May 2015 and till to date no one knows who made the video and leaked it to the media.

In his statement, the interior minister said that the airing of videos of “under investigation” held suspects was an illegal and unethical act.

He said that the federal government was writing a letter to the Sindh government to launch a probe to know which investigation agency was involved in leaking the interrogation videos.