LAHORE, Sept 7: In a surprise move, police on Friday raided the house of a Pakistan People’s Party leader.

Former Punjab PPP information secretary Navid Chaudhry’s Faisal Town residence was raided at 2pm but he was away.

On his wife’s insistence that Mr Chaudhry belonged to PPP and not the PML-N, whose workers and leaders were police’s prime targets nowadays, the police claimed that they had Chaudhry’s arrest warrants.

When his wife got the SHO through to Mr Chaudhry on his cell phone, he informed him that the police had his detention orders and they “were not here just by mistake.”

Navid Chaudhry later told Dawn that he had come to know through reliable sources that the Punjab government had prepared lists of PPP workers and might start arresting them too. When asked as to why the government would go after them, as they were not going to Islamabad to welcome Nawaz Sharif on Sept 10, he replied that the government might wanted to stop PPP workers from taking part in the lawyers’ demonstrations. Chaudhry, however, was astonished over the development.

The Faisal Town police denied they raided Chaudhry’s residence. Capital City Police Officer Malik Iqbal was not available for comments.

Communication and Works Minister Chaudhry Zaheeruddin, the ruling PML’s Punjab secretary general, expressed ignorance about the raid. He said the government had no plans to launch a crackdown against PPP workers or leaders.

Meanwhile, hunt for PML-N workers continued on Friday and the police captured dozens of party activists from different parts of the city.

According to sources, over 60 PML-N workers had been detained in the city since the launch of the drive against them five days ago.