LAHORE: Amid fresh reports that the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) chief and his brother are still ‘missing’ after the launch of large-scale operation against the party in mid of October in Muridke, the provincial capital police have reportedly arrested a total of its 1,250 key members including the financiers and the workers wanted in over 100 criminal cases so far.

“We didn’t know where TLP chief Saad Rizvi and his brother Anas Rizvi have gone,” a senior officer in Central Police Office (CPO) Lahore told this reporter on Thursday.

According to him, both of them were marked as high-profile targets by the Punjab police for being wanted in more than 100 FIRs lodged against them.

Quoting the intelligence reports, the police official said the TLP chief and his brother were not using any kind of electronic gadget or device and that was the leading factor that helped them to stay away from the radars/gadgets of the law enforcers.

Officials claim arrest of 1,250 key members, financiers; say duo not using gadgets; reject allegations about harassing female family members of ‘wanted’ TLP men

“We used many modern gadgets and technologies to trace them but failed to find out their whereabouts in the country,” the official claimed.

He said the ‘mysterious disappearance’ of Saad and Anas has baffled the Punjab police and other law-enforcement agencies.

“I can only make sure that they are not in Punjab’s territory,” the official said, adding that the provincial police experts, who were assigned tasks to trace and arrest them, could only obtain four possible locations when they managed to flee from Muridke city soon after the operation.

Their locations were identified in a remote area of Muridke, then in Lahore and Azad Jammu & Kashmir.

As per the later reports, the Punjab police were informed that the TLP chief and his brother may have gone underground in Karachi, he said.

About the crackdown in Lahore, the official said the provincial capital has been the hub of activities of the TLP’s top leadership and other workers for housing the headquarters of the party.

So, the major focus of the police remained arrests of the hardcore members of the TLP from Lahore.

“We have prepared two lists of the TLP members for carrying out violent agitation and attacks on the police,” he said.

A list of the targeted TLP members was prepared on the basis of the geofencing carried out in Lahore’s route that they had used to launch the march on Islamabad and in Muridke where they had encountered with the LEAs.

The second list provided to all the 85 police stations of Lahore was of the financiers, the police official said adding that in the crackdowns continued on a daily basis, the city police have arrested a total of 1,250 hardcore TLP members and the financiers so far.

Sources said sufferings of the families of the ‘wanted’ TLP members increased manifold due to the frequent police raids at their homes.

A majority of the families have locked their houses and gone into hiding to avoid police crackdown.

According to the sources, they had no option other than to abandon the educational activities of their children as they were frequently changing locations amid reports that the police teams were vigorously pursuing them to complete the ‘targeted’ arrests.

The police officers, however, claimed that they were not harassing or arresting the female members of the TLP members wanted in the cases lodged against them under heinous offences.

Talking to Dawn on the condition of anonymity, a station house officer (SHO) posted in Lahore confirmed that they were under immense pressure to complete the task of arresting the ‘wanted’ TLP men.

In order to trace them, they had no option other than to take into custody the close relatives of the ‘targets’ including father, brothers, young sons and their immediate cousins.

“After taking them into custody, we used to get the call record data of the close male relatives of the wanted TLP men to find out whether they were in contact with them or not,” the SHO said.

Though this practice could not be justified, it was employed to reach the ‘targeted’ TLP men and in many cases it worked and helped them to arrest the suspects.

He, however, rejected the allegations that they were harassing the female family members of the ‘wanted’ TLP men.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2025