Three sisters of PTI founder Imran Khan were being held in Kot Lakhpat Jail on Monday under 30-day detention orders, after a sequence of detentions that unfolded in less than a day and sharply raised the political temperature just days before the party’s planned September 27 march on Islamabad.

Aleema Khan was the first to be taken. According to party sources, Lytton Road police detained her on Sunday as she left her home in Lahore’s Upper Mall area, reportedly on her way to a gym. Her vehicle was left parked at the police station while she was moved to Kot Lakhpat. The detention order, issued by the Lahore deputy commissioner under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) law, says she will be held at the jail, in the custody of its superintendent, for 30 days from the date of her arrest.

Section 3 of the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, allows the district administration to order the detention of a person it considers a threat to public order, without a conventional criminal charge or trial. The language used in such orders has become fairly familiar in Punjab in recent months, but its practical effect is to remove a person from public life for a month.

Citing the police report, Samaa TV later reported more specific grounds. It alleged that Aleema Khan and a co-accused, Muhammad Amir, were present during the May 9, 2023 protests and road blockades, and had been mobilising party workers and helping organise activity through social media. The channel said the Lahore District Intelligence Committee recommended a 30-day detention on the view that their presence threatened public peace. Under the order, both retain the right to make a representation to the provincial government challenging the decision.

That the cited grounds reach back more than three years, to events in 2023, has drawn attention given the timing, just a week before the planned march. Critics of the move have suggested it looks less like a response to any imminent threat and more like a pre-emptive step timed around the mobilisation. The orders themselves speak only of public safety and the maintenance of order.

Later that night, the detentions widened. Noreen Niazi and Uzma Khan were detained in Lahore, initially along with other family members, though the children and other relatives were subsequently released. Lawyer Rana Mudassir said the two women were transferred to Kot Lakhpat at around 2am. The deputy commissioner’s office said the orders were issued on police recommendation and run for 30 days. According to the text of the order reported by 24NewsHD, the official view was that their presence in any public place would seriously endanger public safety and was likely to disturb the peace.

The channel reported that the detentions followed a media talk the two sisters held in Lahore, in which they condemned Aleema’s arrest. Noreen Niazi had earlier told Geo News that the family would not be intimidated and would continue its efforts for Imran Khan’s freedom, and asked why authorities were so worried that they were detaining women as well. She said PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan had contacted her for information as the situation developed.

Aleema’s sons, Shahrez Khan and Sher Shah, were also taken into custody in Lahore, according to police sources. Mudassir later confirmed that both had been released after a brief detention, a development that eased one concern for the family even as the three sisters remained in jail.

The speed of events has fed claims that the family is being targeted collectively. Dawn reported that PTI said on Monday that more of Imran’s relatives had been “arrested,” and that his son Kasim alleged that authorities forced the two sisters into vehicles without explanation. The official orders reported so far, however, cover only the three sisters, and no other relatives have been reported held. Imran Khan himself remains incarcerated in Adiala Jail, where he has been held since August 2023.

Barrister Gohar, speaking from Peshawar, called Aleema’s detention the first step toward worsening an already fragile situation and demanded that such measures stop immediately and that she be released. He reiterated that the September 27 mobilisation would remain peaceful and political, aimed at securing the party’s constitutional rights and the implementation of court orders, and said the party wanted neither confrontation nor violence.

He also disclosed that negotiations with the government had made no headway. Describing the political atmosphere as cold, he said nothing could currently be worked out through talks, while maintaining that political problems ultimately require political solutions and that every side would eventually need to take a step back for any resolution to be reached.

Imran Khan responded through a post on X, saying Noreen Niazi had informed him of Aleema’s arrest by phone. He repeated that the party’s march would be peaceful and political and that it sought a peaceful struggle for its constitutional and political demands, without confrontation or violence. Arresting Aleema, or keeping her under house arrest under MPO, he wrote, was “tantamount to fueling violence and tension.” He called for all such measures to stop immediately, demanded her release, and said the party would soon announce its course of action.

The detentions form part of a broader pattern of action against PTI figures in Punjab. Earlier in the week, detention orders were reportedly issued under the same provision against several party leaders and workers in Lahore, as authorities moved to curb organisational activity ahead of the demonstration. PTI’s Central Punjab spokesperson condemned Aleema’s detention and alleged that party workers more broadly were being arrested as the party finalised preparations for its nationwide protest campaign, which it has described as its most significant mobilisation since Imran Khan’s imprisonment began.

The march itself is the backdrop to all of it. PTI has called a countrywide protest including a march on Islamabad on September 27, with the stated aims of securing Imran Khan’s release and, in the party’s words, upholding the supremacy of the Constitution. Aleema Khan has been a visible presence at earlier protests; a file photo published by Dawn shows her sitting in front of a police barricade in Rawalpindi on December 9, 2025.

The government is also anxious about the economic cost of protest activity. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has separately warned that sit-ins and demonstrations, including those planned by PTI and Jamaat-e-Islami over separate political and economic grievances, could cost the national exchequer roughly Rs120 billion a day if they proceed as planned. The warning came in the same news cycle as the detentions, and it underlines how much is at stake for both sides in the coming days.

If the orders run their full term, the sisters would remain in custody until around the third week of October, well after the march. The government has cited public order as its ground for the detentions, while PTI presents them as pressure on the founder’s immediate family, a more personal confrontation than the party’s earlier rounds of protest. With the party promising a response and the march just six days away, the coming days will show whether Barrister Gohar’s insistence on a peaceful, political route can hold, and whether the confrontation deepens or eases.