PTI's Own Secretary General Says He Doesn't Know Where Afridi Is

Twenty-four hours after President Asif Ali Zardari imposed governor's rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the most basic fact about the man it removed from office — where he is — remains unresolved. Salman Akram Raja, PTI's secretary general, said in a video the party posted to its official X account that he did not know where former chief minister Sohail Afridi was being held or what condition he was in, and that KP party president Junaid Akbar had likewise gone unaccounted for.

Two competing claims, no official confirmation

PTI's own messaging has not been consistent on what exactly happened to Afridi. Information Minister Shafi Jan and MNA Shahid Khattak both said on October 11 that Afridi had been arrested outright, with Khattak adding that he would personally take over leadership of the long march in Afridi's absence. Dawn's reporting the next day offered a more specific, and different, account: sources told the paper that Afridi and Junaid Akbar were being held under house arrest, invoked under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) ordinance — a colonial-era preventive-detention law that lets authorities restrict a person's movement without filing a criminal charge. Federal and provincial authorities have done neither: they have not confirmed Afridi's arrest, his house arrest, or his location, and they have not denied that he is in custody of some kind. PTI had already gone public with the arrest claim hours after governor's rule was imposed; what's changed since is that even the party's own secretary general now says he cannot confirm where Afridi actually is.

The march that didn't reach Swabi

The practical consequence shows up on the ground in Swabi, the interchange Afridi had spent days calling supporters toward by road, motorcycle and on foot. According to police sources cited by the Express Tribune, 59 PTI workers were detained there, with six additional arrests in Khyber district. Mobile phone networks and PTCL internet services remained suspended across Swabi through the crackdown. Videos circulating on social media showed the shipping container Afridi had used as his mobile platform throughout the procession abandoned in Charsadda, a detail that has fed the uncertainty over his movements as much as any official statement has. The march had been building toward this convergence point since setting out on October 4, with Afridi due to announce the party's next phase on October 13 — a deadline that now arrives with the person meant to set that strategy unreachable by his own party's leadership.

PTI's position hasn't moved; its options have narrowed

The party's public line remains that the emergency is unconstitutional and that its "political struggle" will continue regardless of what happened to Afridi personally. What has changed is who is in a position to lead that struggle. Governor's rule already stripped Afridi and his entire cabinet of their offices, and the federal government's same-day authorisation of army deployment under Article 245 gives security forces a broader legal basis to manage the kind of mass gathering the march was meant to produce. With the party's top KP leadership either detained, under house arrest, or unaccounted for, and its central leadership unable to say which, the long march's momentum has effectively stopped at the same interchange it was supposed to pass through.

What would resolve the uncertainty

Three things would settle the central question this story keeps circling back to. The first is an official statement — from the Interior Ministry, the KP governor's office, or the police — confirming or denying Afridi's custody status, which has not come as of this writing. The second is a court filing: an MPO detention order, unlike an informal arrest, is a paper instrument that can be challenged through a writ petition, and a habeas corpus filing from Afridi's family or counsel would itself confirm which legal mechanism, if any, is actually in use. The third is whether PTI's October 13 deadline for announcing its "next phase" happens at all, and if so, who inside the party is positioned to make that call. Build Better Pakistan will update this piece as Afridi's status becomes clearer.

Build Better Pakistan's Politics Desk covers Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's governance crisis and the federal-provincial balance of power across Pakistan.