About 70 PTI workers and local leaders in Swabi were arrested by police after they charged them with batons during a protest gathering they held at Karnal Sher Khan Chowk.
Nine local party leaders were arrested even before the rally could start. Police have started a district-wide search operation for them, so the number of people arrested may rise, as per Dawn.
Dawn is a Pakistani English-language newspaper that was launched in 1941.
Former MPAs Rangaiz Khan and Aqibullah Khan, the brother of former National Assembly speaker Asad Qaiser, led the protests. However, both of them escaped when police resorted to force to disperse the protestors.
Police began to slowly and steadily surround them as they were protesting. Once it was clear that none of them could resist, the lathi charge began, and soon everyone was running for cover to avoid being arrested.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) district president Mohammad Sohail Yousafzai and eight other important leaders were earlier detained here on Monday while attempting to organise a rally against Imran Khan’s detention.
The PTI leadership, who had earlier encouraged the workers to avoid detention, has abruptly declared that they will hold a demonstration at the district office’s Karnal Sher Khan chowk.
The district police soon closed all access points to the chowk, and a strong police presence was seen in the administrative centres of four Tehsils, preventing their march to the district headquarters.
Section-144 was imposed in the district for three months and the violators would be arrested, said the officials.
The protests came after former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was arrested on August 5 as a district and sessions court in the federal capital convicted him for corrupt practices in connection with the Toshakhana case.
After Imran Khan’s arrest, PTI on Saturday called for peaceful protests in Pakistan within the ambit of the law and Constitution after the arrest of the party’s chairman Imran Khan, Pakistan-based Dawn reported.
The PTI said it has taken action as per Imran Khan’s instructions for its organisation and political plan of action, adding that the entire nation had rejected the verdict of the sessions court. Imran Khan’s arrest comes approximately three months after his first arrest on May 9 when he was arrested in Islamabad in the Al-Qadir Trust case.