Court issues arrest warrants for Sohail Afridi in Radio Pakistan case

An anti-terrorism court in Peshawar on Wednesday issued arrest warrants for Sohail Afridi, the former chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and four other PTI figures in the case over the attack on Radio Pakistan’s Peshawar building, Dawn reported. Afridi was left without any effective office when governor’s rule was imposed in the province.

Who is named

Judge Wali Mohammad Khan ordered the warrants after the prosecution put a supplementary charge-sheet on the record. Besides Afridi, it names former provincial ministers Taimoor Saleem Jhagra and Kamran Bangash, the PTI Peshawar district president, Irfan Saleem, and party activist Amir Khan Chamkani. None of them was in the original FIR or charge-sheet. The court said the five had not yet been arrested and that the warrants were issued under Section 204 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The hearing, originally due to take place earlier, had been put off to October 28 because the judge was absent.

Senior lawyer Shabbir Hussain Gigyani appeared for the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, senior public prosecutor Manzoor Alam Khan for the state, and Advocate Ali Zaman for the accused.

The evidence the police rely on

The charge-sheet rests on forensic work ordered on December 12, 2025, on an application by Gigyani. The Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) found that the facial features of the five men matched suspects seen in video footage of the rioting. Nadra’s report gave identity card numbers that apparently belong to the men and called them “probable matches” for the profile pictures it was given. In the light of those findings, the Radio Pakistan Peshawar station director, Tufail Ahmad, recorded a supplementary statement naming the five as accused, according to the investigating officer, DSP Khushal Khan.

That is the prosecution’s case. PTI leaders question whether the footage is authentic, arguing that the clips do not relate to the attack of May 10, 2023, which followed the arrest of the party’s founder, Imran Khan. Gigyani maintains that the footage shows the attack on the Radio Pakistan building. The court has not ruled on that dispute, and the reports we drew on do not say how the defence will respond.

What comes next

The next hearing is set for November 4. Meanwhile, a petition in the Peshawar High Court challenging Afridi’s alleged illegal detention or enforced disappearance is still pending. Federal ministers have said Afridi, who was in preventive custody after governor’s rule began on October 11, rejected an agreement the government proposed before the emergency. Read our report on how the emergency and governor’s rule were imposed.

Why this case matters

The Radio Pakistan attack is among the cases that followed the unrest of May 2023, and adding a sitting provincial leader’s name three and a half years later is a significant step. For the PTI, it fits a pattern of cases against its leaders, which it says are political. For the state, the argument is that forensic evidence has now identified people who were not named earlier. Courts will decide between those readings, and the authenticity of the video clips is likely to be the central question. Whether any of the five are arrested, and whether they challenge the warrants, will show how the case proceeds.

This article draws on reporting by Dawn.