A day after his arrest in a fresh crackdown launched against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) for ‘violating’ regulations devised under a new law – Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Bill, 2024, the police on Tuesday released party chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan from their custody.
In a statement, the police said the PTI chief had been discharged from a case registered in Sangjani police station. The police, a day earlier, arrested a number of party leaders in several cases, including the reported attack on police at Chongi No 26 – which turned into a battleground as PTI workers and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) clashed after the formers deviated routes leading to Sangjani, venue of public gathering.
Other party leaders who have been arrested include PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, Sher Afzal Marwat, Zain Qureshi, Sheikh Waqas Akram, Naseem-ur-Rehman, and Zubair Khan. The police have filed cases against several leaders of the Imran-founded party under the newly-enacted law, at the Noon Village and Sangjani police stations.
Separately, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur has reached Peshawar after being “missing” for hours in the wake of the crackdown against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leadership over alleged violation of law in relation to the party’s rally in Islamabad, sources told Geo News on Tuesday.
The development was confirmed by PTI’s member National Assembly (MNA) Shahid Khattak with sources saying that the CM was “busy in various meetings” in the federal capital after the party’s power show. The former ruling party maintained that Gandapur held a long meeting with government officials over the law and order situation in the province and that he couldn’t be reached due to mobile phone jammers at the location of the said meeting. The update comes after the Imran Khan-founded party had raised concerns about the possible arrest of the province’s chief executive as he couldn’t be contacted for over eight hours.