PTI’s Gohar, Marwat arrested as crackdown on violators of public rallies law kicks off – SUCH TV

Police on Monday arrested PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Khan and lawmaker Sher Afzal Marwat outside Parliament House, with more arrests expected for allegedly violating the newly enacted public gathering law during the party’s Sunday power show in the capital.

The Islamabad police said that PTI leaders Omar Ayub Khan and Zartaj Gul Wazir would also be taken into custody.

Marwat resisted the arrest and asked the police to show arrest warrant.

Heavy contingents of police were deployed outside the parliament while all entry and exit routes to the Red Zone were also closed from D-Chowk, Nadra Chowk, Serena, and Marriott, except for Margala Road.

However, PTI MNA Ali Muhammad Khan was not taken into custody by the police when he departed from the parliament.

Marwat was arrested for violating regulations devised under a new law —Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Bill, 2024, sources told Geo News, adding that the PTI lawmaker was accused of clashing with police personnel a day earlier.

Alongside Omar and Zartaj, more PTI leaders Hammad Azhar, Kanwal Shauzab, Naeem Haider Panjutha, Amir Mughal, and Khalid Khursheed would also be arrested, the sources said.

Several PTI lawmakers are currently present in the Parliament House including Gohar, Sheikh Waqas Akram, Sahibzada Hamid Raza, Zain Qureshi, and Shahid Khattak.

They added that Islamabad police were expected to launch a crackdown against the former ruling party’s Punjab leaders who attended yesterday’s power show.

It emerged that Islamabad police formally informed the Punjab top officials regarding the actions.

In a separate action, Shoaib Shaheen was also arrested from his residence.

Police filed cases against several leaders from the Imran-founded party under newly-enacted Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Bill, 2024, at Noon and Sangjani police stations.

28 local leaders including Seemabia Tahir and Raja Basharat were also nominated in the cases.

The first information report (FIR) stated that the charged PTI workers had attacked the police teams with batons and pelted stones who tried to stop them from violating the Islamabad rally’s route.

It added that police personnel deployed on security duties resorted to tear gas shelling and nabbed 17 party activists from the scene.

The PTI staged its much-hyped power show in Islamabad with party workers and police clashed on Chungi No 26, on the outskirts of the capital, after the rally participants allegedly violated the designated routes for the public gathering in Sangjani.

The federal capital police claimed that the PTI supporters’ insistence to use route set for the general public led to clash with the law enforcers.

The police officials also fired tear gas shells and baton charged the PTI supporters after the party workers resorted to stone pelting.

Bill to regulate public gatherings

The Peaceful Assembly and Public Order Bill, 2024, had sailed through the Senate and the National Assembly amid the opposition protests a few days ahead of the Imran-founded party’s Islamabad rally which increased the powers of the federal capital’s local authorities to control public gatherings.

President Asif Ali Zardari signed the bill into law just a day before the PTI’s rally.

The new bill empowers the district magistrate to regulate and ban public assemblies in the federal capital, proposing a punishment of up to three years or/and an unspecified fine to the members of an “unlawful assembly”.

It also proposed that repeat offenders will be liable to imprisonment for a term that may extend to 10 years.

The bill says the ban on assembly under the proposed law would remain in force for the duration specified by the district magistrate, which may be extended if the conditions necessitating the ban persist.

“An officer-in-charge of a police station, on the instruction of the district magistrate, may command any assembly likely to disturb the public peace to disperse. It shall then be the duty of the members of such an assembly to comply and disperse accordingly,” it reads.