Protesters enraged by the arrest of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s former prime minister, on Tuesday broke into the headquarters of the army in an unprecedented show of defiance against the powerful military.

Mr Khan, the legendary cricketer, was arrested in the morning by security forces who stormed the Islamabad High Court before bundling him into an armoured car.

Video footage showed dozens of officers from the paramilitary Rangers Police force shoving and manhandling the 70-year-old, who walks with a limp following an assassination attempt last year.

Furious protesters descended on major cities and military sites across the country as leaders of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) called for a national ‘shutdown’.