PHC Grants Bail to PTI Activists Held Under MPO
The Peshawar High Court has granted bail to 28 Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) activists who were detained under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) Ordinance after emergency and governor’s rule were imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The PTI activists held under MPO will now be released on bail while their challenge to the detention orders continues before the court.
A bench comprising Justice Syed Arshad Ali and Justice Babar Sattar directed the petitioners, including Ahsan and 27 others, to produce two surety bonds of Rs100,000 each to the satisfaction of their respective area magistrates. The bench also asked each petitioner to give a written undertaking.
“The petitioners shall furnish an undertaking that they shall neither engage in any anti-state activity nor act in any manner prejudicial to public safety or the maintenance of public order,” the bench declared.
The bench observed that the petitioners had made out a prima facie case for interim relief, as their fundamental rights under Articles 4, 9, 10 and 15 of the Constitution were involved. It fixed Oct 27 for the next hearing of the petition against detention orders issued by the home department on Oct 12, 2026.
Assistant Advocate General Waqar Khalil sought time for the respondents, including the home department and the deputy commissioner of Mardan, and promised para-wise comments with the relevant records before the next hearing.
Why the PTI activists held under MPO challenged detention
A panel of lawyers, including Azhar Rahim, Sajjad Ahmad, Saeed Usman and Mohammad Yasir Khattak, appeared for the petitioners. They contended that the detention orders issued by the home department under Section 3 of the West Pakistan Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, against their clients were identical in nature.
They argued that the orders neither disclosed specific grounds nor referred to any particular incident, occurrence or overt act to support the sweeping allegations and apprehensions expressed in them. In their submission, such orders cannot stand when they give the detained person no concrete charge to answer.
The lawyers cited an earlier high court judgment titled “Aftab Alam and another vs Secretary Home and Tribal Affairs, Government of KPK, Peshawar and others”. They maintained that the impugned orders failed to meet the mandatory legal requirements under Section 3 of the MPO Ordinance, 1960, as well as the settled principles laid down by the Supreme Court regarding preventive detention.
They also cited interim relief granted by high court benches in Swat and Abbottabad on Oct 20 and 21 to individuals facing identical Section 3 orders, and sought parity of treatment.
What MPO detention means in practice
Preventive detention under the MPO Ordinance allows the executive to detain a person on the ground that action is needed to prevent a threat to public safety or public order. It differs from arrest in a criminal case, where police act after an offence and the accused faces a trial on a specific charge.
That distinction sits at the heart of this case: the petitioners say their orders read like copies, with no individual facts.
The interim order does not decide the main petition. It grants bail for now, leaving the lawfulness of the orders for the hearings ahead.
Courts in Pakistan have scrutinised custody and police powers in other recent cases too. The Lahore High Court has been moved over an alleged encounter death in Multan, while the Punjab chief minister has endorsed the police version in the Hina Javed case. An anti-terrorism court has separately warned Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha over their statements in a security breach case.
What happens next
Separately, 122 other PTI activists from Swabi district have challenged their detention under the MPO Ordinance before the high court. A joint petition was filed on their behalf by members of the Insaf Lawyers Forum, the PTI’s lawyers’ wing.
Those petitioners called the orders illegal and unconstitutional, and also sought interim bail pending disposal of their petition.
Several petitions against MPO detentions across the province are pending, and the parity argument from Swat and Abbottabad will likely feature in them.
The 28 activists must now furnish their surety bonds and undertakings. The Oct 27 hearing will test whether the state can defend orders the petitioners call identical and groundless.
Who was granted bail?
The Peshawar High Court granted bail to 28 PTI activists, including Ahsan and 27 others, who were detained under the MPO Ordinance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
