Arrest Warrants Issued for Sohail Afridi and Four PTI Figures in Radio Pakistan Attack Case

By TaazaPulse News Desk · Published: 29 October 2026 · Politics desk report from TaazaPulse

In a new development in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency story, an anti-terrorism court in Peshawar has issued arrest warrants for former chief minister Sohail Afridi and four other Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf figures in the case over the May 2023 attack on the Radio Pakistan building in Peshawar. The warrants, issued on Wednesday, 28 October, are the first court orders naming Afridi as an accused in the long-running case — and they come while he remains detained under the emergency and governor's rule imposed in the province on 11 October.

The court acted after the prosecution submitted a supplementary charge sheet formally nominating the five men as accused. Anti-Terrorism Court Judge Wali Mohammad Khan issued the warrants under Section 204 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and adjourned proceedings to 4 November 2026, directing that the warrants be executed. The five men named are Afridi, former provincial ministers Kamran Bangash and Taimur Saleem Jhagra, PTI Peshawar district president Irfan Saleem, and party activist Amir Khan Chamkani. None of the five was named in the original first information report or the first charge sheet in the case.

What the court decided on Wednesday

The hearing turned on a supplementary challan — a follow-up charge sheet — submitted by the investigation officer on 13 October. According to reports of the proceedings, the challan asked the court to add the five men as accused on the basis of identity-verification reports from the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and forensic analysis from the Punjab Forensic Science Agency. The reports, prosecutors said, matched the men's facial features and identification details with video clips and profile pictures from the attack, after a request made on 12 December 2025 by the counsel for the complainant.

Radio Pakistan Peshawar station director Tufail Ahmad recorded a supplementary statement identifying the suspects following those forensic findings, the investigation officer, DSP Khushal Khan, told the court. Senior lawyer Shabbir Hussain Gigyani appeared for the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, public prosecutor Manzoor Alam Khan appeared for the state, and advocate Ali Zaman represented the accused. Defence counsel asked for more time to prepare; the judge declined the adjournment request and set the next hearing for 4 November.

A written order from the court also recorded that Special Prosecutor Nauman-ul-Haq Kakakhel has been de-notified, and that nine accused in the Radio Pakistan cases remain absconding. Legal experts cited in coverage of the order said the warrants authorise police to arrest the named men at any time, and that an accused person must appear personally before the court to pursue a bail application. They added that if the accused fail to appear, they could be declared proclaimed offenders through the applicable legal process, and that disqualification proceedings before the Election Commission have been raised as a possibility — though any such consequences would depend on later proceedings and the relevant legal provisions.

The May 2023 attack at the centre of the case

The case goes back to the unrest that followed the arrest of PTI founder Imran Khan on 9 May 2023. On 10 May that year, protesters stormed the Radio Pakistan building in Peshawar, vandalising it and setting parts of it on fire. The building, the state broadcaster's provincial station, became one of the most prominent symbols of the damage from those two days of protests, alongside attacks on military and public installations in other cities.

The original case listed more than 80 suspects, and several people have already been arrested and tried in connection with it. The five men named this week were not among them. Their addition rests on the forensic exercise that followed the December 2025 request: video material from the day was compared with profile pictures, and NADRA and the Punjab Forensic Science Agency reported matches that prosecutors say place the newly named accused at the attack site.

PTI figures have contested that evidence. According to reports of the proceedings, they argued that the recordings relied on by the prosecution did not depict the events of 10 May 2023. That dispute — over what the footage actually shows — is now part of what the court will have to resolve as the case proceeds. An arrest warrant is a procedural step, not a finding of guilt: the accused are presumed innocent unless and until the prosecution proves the charge in court, and the warrants themselves establish nothing about what happened at the building.

Why the timing matters: warrants inside an emergency

The warrants land in the middle of a constitutional confrontation. On 11 October, President Asif Ali Zardari, on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his cabinet, proclaimed emergency and governor's rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, relying on Articles 232 and 234 of the Constitution. The federal government said the provincial government had deliberately disengaged from the fight against terrorism while the province faced an unprecedented intensity of terrorist violence. Governor Faisal Karim Kundi took charge of the provincial administration.

Afridi was detained as the emergency was imposed — the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan dates his detention to 12 October — along with PTI provincial president Junaid Akbar and assembly speaker Babar Saleem Swati. The PTI says he has not been produced before a court and describes his custody as unconstitutional; a senior party leader has said the government calls it protective custody. A petition in the Peshawar High Court challenging his detention was adjourned to 4 November — the same date the anti-terrorism court has now fixed for the Radio Pakistan case.

The PTI has rejected both the emergency and governor's rule as a pretext for political victimisation, noting the move came as the party prepared protests demanding Imran Khan's release. Party chairman Gohar Ali Khan has categorically rejected the proclamation, and party spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari called it "more of a coup disguised as emergency". The party has challenged the proclamation in the Peshawar High Court, and parliament must still approve the emergency. The HRCP has condemned the emergency, called the detention of the elected chief minister a "grave affront to democratic norms", and demanded the release of arbitrarily detained people and the restoration of the provincial assembly.

What the five men are accused of — and what they say

The supplementary challan accuses the five men of involvement in the attack on the Radio Pakistan building: its storming, vandalism and arson during the 10 May 2023 protests. The prosecution's case, as presented to the court, is built on the forensic identification exercise — NADRA verification and Punjab Forensic Science Agency analysis of video clips and photographs — together with the station director's supplementary statement.

The defence position, as reported, is that the recordings do not show what the prosecution claims they show, and that the identification exercise is unreliable. The court has not yet ruled on that dispute. What it has done is accept the challan's nomination of the five men as accused and issue warrants for their arrest, which means the next procedural step is their production before the court — voluntarily or through arrest — after which the pre-trial process, including any bail applications, can begin.

For Afridi personally, the warrants add a criminal case to a detention that was already the subject of a constitutional challenge. He ceased to hold office when the emergency was imposed, and his party says he has been held without being produced before a court. The warrants now give the state a separate, court-ordered basis to take him into custody — this time in a criminal case, through a court process, with a fixed hearing date. Whether the two tracks — the detention challenge and the criminal case — converge on 4 November, when both are listed, is one of the questions lawyers will be watching.

What happens on 4 November

Two hearings now point at the same date. In the anti-terrorism court, the prosecution will report on the execution of the warrants: whether the five men have been arrested, have surrendered, or remain at large. If they appear, the court can begin the pre-trial process and hear bail applications; if they do not, the prosecution can seek further coercive steps, including proceedings to declare them proclaimed offenders.

In the Peshawar High Court, the petition concerning Afridi's detention is also listed for 4 November, according to earlier reports. The two proceedings are legally separate — one is a criminal trial, the other a challenge to detention under the emergency — but they share the same central figure and the same political backdrop, and the outcomes will be read together.

Beyond that date, the wider tracks continue: parliament's approval of the emergency proclamation, the High Court's constitutional challenge to the proclamation itself, and the Election Commission's order for local government elections in the province's settled districts while the twelve emergency districts remain under federal administration. The warrants are one development inside that larger story, not its conclusion — but for a former chief minister already in detention, they are the development that turns a political confrontation into a criminal case with his name on it.