Former federal minister and PTI central leader Ali Amin Gandapur was arrested on Thursday evening in Dera Ismail Khan, after a dramatic standoff between the police and his supporters outside the premises of the Peshawar High Court’s Dera bench. The police had besieged the building, where Mr. Gandapur had remained for several hours along with his lawyers and associates. Eventually, he came out to surrender and was taken into custody, and transported in a prison van to an undisclosed location.
It is not immediately clear in which case Gandapur has been arrested, as he had already obtained transit bail in multiple cases registered against him in Islamabad, Punjab, and Dera. The police officers involved in the arrest have remained tight-lipped about the case details and whether he will be kept in D.I. Khan or shifted to another city within or outside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The arrest has prompted condemnation from the PTI leadership, with PTI chief Imran Khan tweeting that a “complete law of the jungle prevails” in the country and alleging that the opposition’s “one-point agenda” is to go after PTI workers and leadership. He further stated that the arrest of Gandapur was decided pre-emptively despite bail, and that the opposition would still be decimated in the elections.
Earlier on Thursday, Gandapur had visited the sessions court to obtain pre-arrest bail in cases registered in D.I. Khan. From there, he went to the high court, where he had an iftar dinner while the police officials waited for him outside. Even after the court’s official time had ended, he remained there with his supporters, and so did the police force, awaiting his exit from the court’s premises.
Gandapur’s lawyer, Ghulam Mohammad Sapal, stated that his client had already been granted transit and protective bails in all known cases registered against him in different parts of the country. He further added that they had appeared in the sessions court to get pre-arrest bail in a case and that when they came out of the courtroom, the doors of the session court were closed and the police were there to arrest Mr. Gandapur. Mr. Sapal has submitted an application in the high court’s Dera bench against the police action, requesting that the police should disclose which and how many cases have been registered against Mr. Gandapur.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has condemned the arrest, calling it a deplorable act, particularly when the Lahore High Court has recently struck down the colonial sedition law. The arrest of Gandapur has raised questions about the state of the rule of law in the country, with many expressing concern about the apparent abuse of state power to target political opponents.
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