PHC to take up plea seeking recovery of 'abducted' KP minister Fazal Shakoor

CHARSADDA/PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) will take up a petition on Wednesday seeking the recovery of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Public Health Engineering Fazal Shakoor Khan.

The petition was filed on Tuesday, a day after the minister and two other men with him were allegedly abducted by unidentified armed men near Peshawar’s M-1 toll plaza.

A case has also been filed at the Chamkani police station on kidnapping charges. Both the petition and the first information report (FIR) were filed on the complaint of the minister’s brother, retired Major Anwar Aziz.

The FIR, dated Sept 21 and seen by Dawn, alleged that Fazal, his driver Qaiser Khan and Constable Mujahid were abducted by unidentified armed men near Peshawar’s M-1 toll plaza on Monday afternoon.

The plea, filed through advocate Bashir Khan Wazir, requested the PHC to direct the police and other law enforcement agencies to recover the minister, whose whereabouts remain unknown to his family.

It also sought directions to the KP inspector general (IG) and the capital city police officer (CCPO) to constitute a high-level inquiry committee to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident and take steps to recover Fazal.

The KP IG, CCPO, the Peshawar senior superintendent of police (SSP) Operations, and other relevant authorities have been made respondents in the petition.

It claimed that armed men in plain clothes intercepted his vehicle near the Peshawar Motorway Toll Plaza and fired at its tyres. It further alleged that the armed men then forced the provincial minister out of his vehicle and took him away.

The plea described the alleged abduction of the provincial minister in broad daylight as a matter of serious concern and requested the PHC to order his recovery.

The petitioner maintained that if the missing minister was in the custody of any state institution or other authority, he should be produced before the court and released if his detention was found to be unlawful.

The petition is fixed for hearing on Sept 23 (Wednesday) before a division bench comprising Senior Puisne Judge Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Kamran Hayat Miankhel.

FIR and protest

The FIR invoked Section 365 (kidnapping or abduction) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

According to the complaint, Fazal and the others were travelling from Charsadda to Peshawar to attend a KP Assembly session when they were intercepted by armed men in “black uniforms and plain clothes”.

They were taken to an undisclosed location, while the official vehicle they were travelling in was left at the spot, the FIR added.

A video shared by the PTI showed several masked armed men approaching the minister’s car. In the video, one of the masked men grabs the door of the car to open it while another is seen firing shots at the tyres of the moving vehicle.

The PTI had also announced a protest demonstration against the alleged abduction at Farooq Azam Chowk at 4pm on Tuesday.

Speaking to Dawn, PTI Charsadda president and MPA Arshad Umarzai said the party would announce its future course of action at the protest.

Strongly condemning Fazal’s “arrest”, he described it as a failure of the provincial government.

In a statement posted on X, KP Information Minister Shafi Jan termed the “picking up” of Fazal a “direct attack on the Constitution, law, democracy and public mandate”.

“We will not be intimidated by such tactics. Snatching away the right to peaceful political struggle is the height of fascism, but we will continue to fight for our rights while remaining within the bounds of the Constitution and law,” he said.