Claim: Different videos show the moment when now-dysfunctional KP Chief Minister Sohail Afridi was arrested and taken into custody after emergency and governor’s rule were imposed in the province.

Fact: All footage predates Afridi’s arrest in October 2026.

Between 11 and 14 October 2026, social media users shared different footage allegedly showing the moment that the now-dysfunctional Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister Sohail Afridi was arrested and taken into preventive custody by security personnel after the federal government imposed emergency and governor’s rule in the province.

Some of the captions accompanying the viral videos are as follows:

• “سہیل آفریدی کی گرفتاری کی ویڈیو بھی سامنے آ گئی۔ ویڈیو میں سہیل آفریدی کو گرفتاری کے موقع پر پولیس کے ساتھ دیکھا جا سکتا ہے۔ گرفتاری کے مناظر سوشل میڈیا پر زیرِ گردش ہیں، جبکہ واقعے سے متعلق مختلف سیاسی حلقوں کی جانب سے اپنے اپنے مؤقف کا اظہار کیا جا رہا ہے۔ [A video of Sohail Afridi’s arrest has also surfaced. The video shows Sohail Afridi with the police at the time of the arrest. Scenes of the arrest are circulating on social media, while various political circles are expressing their respective stances regarding the incident.]”
• “سہیل آفریدی کی گرفتاری کی ویڈیو سامنے آ گئی [A video of Sohail Afridi’s arrest has surfaced.]”
• “سہیل آفریدی کی گرفتاری کی ویڈیو سامنے آ گئی 💔😢 افسوس! گرفتار کرنا تھا تو عزت اور طریقے سے بھی کیا جا سکتا تھا۔ آخر وہ بھی ایک انسان ہے، اختلاف اپنی جگہ لیکن انسانیت اور عزت سب سے بڑھ کر ہے۔ یہ مناظر دیکھ کر دل افسردہ ہو جاتا ہے۔ اللہ پاکستان میں انصاف اور امن قائم فرمائے۔ 🤲💔 [A video of Sohail Afridi’s arrest has surfaced. 💔😢 Sad! If he had to be arrested, it could have been carried out with dignity and in a proper manner. After all, he is a human being; while disagreements may exist, humanity and respect take precedence above all. Seeing these scenes is disheartening. May Allah establish justice and peace in Pakistan. 🤲💔]”
• “وزیراعلیٰ سہیل آفریدی کی گرفتاری کے مناظر منظر عام پر آ گئے 😱 سہیل آفریدی کو گرفتار کر لیا گیا، ویڈیو وائرل! [Footage of Chief Minister Sohail Afridi’s arrest has surfaced! 😱 Sohail Afridi has been arrested, the video has gone viral!]”
• “وزیر اعلیٰ خیبر پختونخوا سہیل آفریدی کی گرفتاری کی کوشش ویڈیو کلپ [Video clip of attempt to arrest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi]”

PTI’s Long March

On 25 September 2026, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) announced that it was postponing its long-planned protest — originally set to take place on 27 September — to 4 October. The “Long March” is aimed at demanding the release of the party founder and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, from prison, where he has been incarcerated since August 2023 over various charges.

At the time, the government took major steps to restrict the scheduled protest that some commentators asserted were disruptive and mishandled. In addition, there was a wave of preventive arrests targeting PTI’s organisers and associated figures, including Khan’s sisters.

Amnesty International termed the arrests a “flagrant violation of human rights.”

On 2 October, the Pakistan Army’s top brass issued a warning that “any attempt to cause agitation or create [a] 9 May-like situation, on any pretext whatsoever, will be dealt with decisive force and rule of law, without hesitation and discrimination”, according to a statement issued by its media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), following the 277th Corps Commanders’ Conference.

At the same time, representatives from the federal government and the PTI met to discuss an alternate way forward on 2 and 3 October but the talks ended in a deadlock.

On 4 October, Afridi finally launched the “Long March” from southern KP. In the following days, the participants progressed through the outskirts of Peshawar before travelling through Kohat and Darra Adam Khel.

By 8 October, as the rally reached Attock and Khairabad borders, authorities blocked entryways to the country’s capital, Islamabad. The intended route for the march was reportedly changed several times since it was launched.

Law enforcement agencies intensified their defensive posture around the federal capital and Rawalpindi, with Section 144 imposed in Islamabad and Punjab.

On 11 October, Section 144 was also imposed in Karachi for 10 days, effective immediately.

KP gov’t suspended, emergency imposed

However, on 11 October, President Asif Ali Zardari signed a summary to suspend the KP government and impose an emergency in the province, paving the way for governor’s rule, following “decisions by the Federal Cabinet, the Prime Minister [Shehbaz Sharif’s] advice, reports from relevant agencies regarding the law-and-order situation, and the failure of negotiations” with the Centre.

The federal government’s move came amid what it claimed was the KP administration’s “deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism”, as well as its failure “to tackle Islamist militancy”, a move that senior PTI leader Zulfiqar ‘Zulfi’ Bukhari alleged was “more of a coup disguised as emergency”.

The PTI also announced that some of its leaders, including Afridi and the party’s KP president, Junaid Akbar, “had been taken into custody”.

The same day, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) cautioned that an emergency and governor’s rule in KP “risks further deepening political tensions and undermining democratic processes”.

On 12 October, State Interior Minister Tallal Chaudhry said the now-dysfunctional CM and some members of his Cabinet were “taken into preventive custody”, Geo News and Reuters reported.

The same day, Dawn quoted a senior police official as saying that “eight people — including Afridi, MNA Junaid Akbar and assembly speaker Babar Saleem Swati — had been taken into ‘preventative custody’”.

A day later, Afridi’s brother Muhammad Aamir petitioned the Peshawar High Court (PHC) “seeking his immediate recovery, arguing that his alleged abduction and continued detention violated his fundamental rights and demanding an independent judicial inquiry into his disappearance”, The Express Tribune reported.

Also on 13 October, state-run Pakistan TV quoted Information Minister Attaullah Tarar as saying that there was “credible evidence [establishing] the PTI’s contact with TTP”, or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a terrorist group also known as the Pakistani Taliban.

The Express Tribune reported him asking, “How could a government, which is mandated to protect the lives of people and to maintain law and order in a province, be hand in glove with terrorists to promote terrorist activities?”

Tarar’s remarks echo his previous statement from 10 October when he alleged that the PTI is the TTP’s “B-team” and that it does “not condemn terrorists”.

On 14 October, Geo News reported citing information available with the outlet that the now-dysfunctional KP CM was being held “at an undisclosed location” after the door to a locked room he was alone in “was broken open and two officers entered”.

“The officers remained with Afridi for around 30 to 40 minutes and held a conversation with him in a cordial atmosphere. Afridi was reportedly anxious at the time. … He was not handcuffed and no inappropriate treatment was reported during the process,” the publication added.

Fact or Fiction?

Using reverse-image search, we found that the videos social media users have claimed show Afridi’s arrest are old and from at least four different locations.

Visuals from the first video can be traced back to this bulletin run by 92 News HD on 26 December 2025 when there was an altercation as Afridi reached Punjab Assembly last year. Identical scenes start at the 0:14 mark and end at the 0:53 mark. A clip by Public News from the same date also contains matching footage between the 0:52 and the 1:11 marks.

The second clip is from 13 February 2026 when the now-dysfunctional KP CM, along with other PTI leaders, led a protest in Islamabad over former PM Imran Khan’s health concerns before a scuffle broke out with police. Matching visuals can be seen in videos posted by Geo News’ UK Bureau Chief Murtaza Ali Shah, party leader Haleem Adil Sheikh, and social media pages. Similar visuals from the same day and site can be seen in footage posted here on X (formerly Twitter) and here on YouTube.

The third video matched scenes from an X post from 13 January 2026. Using this, we ran a second reverse-image search and traced the clip to October 2025 when it was shared on Facebook here and here, the second of which is by a page called ‘PTI Official Videos’. The captions for both imply that the footage may actually be from earlier but we could not find evidence for the same; however, it is ascertained that it definitely made the rounds in 2025, confirming that it predates Afridi’s 2026 arrest.

The other three videos are from the same day and location, matching — respectively — the visuals that appear in a BBC Urdu article, a Dawn story, and a Facebook clip all from 14 or 15 September 2026. While Afridi, who was on a visit to Lahore, claimed he was “abducted” and then “abandoned”, officials said he stepped into the police van himself, according to the aforementioned reports.

Watch a report by our sister organisation, Soch Videos, about Afridi’s Lahore visit and alleged detention here.

Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that all videos predate the now-dysfunctional KP CM’s arrest in October 2026.

Virality

Soch Fact Check found the videos posted dozens of times on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and X.

Conclusion: All viral footage claiming to show Afridi’s arrest actually predates his October 2026 detention. There have been no authentic videos of the non-dysfunctional CM being taken into custody.

Background image in cover photo: ImMuhammadSohailAfridi

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