In what appears to be an ironic development, the nephew of State Minister for Interior Shehryar Afridi, who is an active anti-drug campaigner, was arrested in December last year for possession of narcotics.
According to a report in the local media, an FIR was lodged against Talal Nadir Afridi on December 11, 2018, at the Jand Attock police station after almost half a kilogramme of hashish was recovered from him and two of his friends.
Per the report, law enforcement personnel had signaled the boys’ car to stop for checking but they fled. They were eventually stopped after police chased their vehicle. The three youth were taken into custody and sent to jail. It is not known whether all of them were bailed out afterwards but Talal had been bailed out.
An official statement by the Interior Ministry reiterated that all are equal in front of the law, even if they belong to the incumbent Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government.
The law will forge its own way regardless of whether someone is a minister or a minister’s relative. No one can influence the law enforcement agencies (LEAs), it added.
No one, hiding behind the excuse of any incident, can become a hindrance in the Interior Ministry’s war against land-grabbers and drug mafia, it noted.
