MNA Shandana Gulzar has filed a constitutional petition in the Federal Constitutional Court seeking the recovery of Sohail Afridi, Babar Saleem Swati and MNA Junaid Akbar Khan, asking the court to order the three men produced before it.

The petition was filed in Islamabad on Thursday, 12 November, under Article 175E(3) of the Constitution. It names the Interior Ministry, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief secretary and the provincial inspector general of police as respondents.

What the petition asks the court to do

The court has been asked to order that Afridi, Swati and Junaid Akbar be produced before it, and to direct the relevant authorities to immediately disclose the three leaders’ whereabouts and the reasons for their detention.

The petition also seeks orders granting the three men access to their lawyers and families, medical facilities and protection from torture. It contends that action taken for political purposes constitutes an abuse of power and a violation of fundamental rights, and asks the court to take notice of the matter and require the authorities to act in accordance with the law.

According to the petition, the constitutional provisions relied on for the emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — Articles 232, 234 and 245 — raise important questions about the limits of state power, and do not authorise the unlawful detention of any person.

A month out of public view

Afridi, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister, has not been seen in public since the night of 11 October, when the federal government proclaimed an emergency in the province under Article 232 and imposed governor’s rule under Article 234.

His brother, Muhammad Aamir, filed a constitutional petition in the Peshawar High Court on 13 October alleging that armed and masked men seized Afridi from the Chief Minister’s House in Peshawar that night, and asked the court to order his recovery and production, investigate the incident and preserve records including CCTV footage.

The federal government later confirmed that Afridi and some cabinet members were in preventive custody, but their exact whereabouts have not been officially disclosed. Swati is the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker and Junaid Akbar is an MNA and the PTI’s provincial president; earlier petitions also raised the cases of other detained PTI leaders.

Why the case moved to the Constitutional Court

The recovery petitions were first heard in the Peshawar High Court, where a two-judge bench referred them to the chief justice for the formation of a larger bench on 3 November, after the provincial government and senior police officials failed to file replies in line with the court’s directives of 20 October.

The Federal Constitutional Court had earlier restrained the Peshawar High Court from hearing writ petitions filed on or after 12 October, including those concerning the emergency and governor’s rule. On 7 November, the Peshawar High Court removed all such petitions from its cause list, including the recovery petitions for Afridi, Swati and Junaid Akbar, and petitioners were directed to approach the appropriate forum.

Gulzar’s petition now takes the recovery case directly to the Federal Constitutional Court. No hearing date had been reported when this story was published.

A separate challenge on the same day

PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan separately approached the Federal Constitutional Court on 12 November, seeking a review of its 5 November order and the release of the chief minister and the speaker. That is a separate petition from Gulzar’s recovery plea.

Source: Pakistan Point, corroborated by Capital News Point.