By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Interior Ministry has added 290 leaders, financiers and activists from the banned Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan to the Provisional National Identification List, barring them from foreign travel, officials said Tuesday.
The roster includes the group’s chief, Saad Rizvi; his brother Anas Rizvi; and 21 other senior office-bearers wanted in cases filed in Lahore, Sheikhupura and other Punjab districts. The Federal Investigation Agency and provincial authorities have been ordered to tighten surveillance at checkpoints, borders and airports.
Officials fear Rizvi and his brother could tap support networks in Karachi to flee prosecution. A senior Punjab official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the names were forwarded at the province’s behest after the individuals were implicated in more than 100 police reports, roughly 80 of them under anti-terrorism statutes.
Twenty-three of the 290 absconders are senior figures tied to financing and protest planning, the official said. Suspected donors were identified through geo-fencing and transaction analysis; their names have been sent to police for possible placement on the Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act over alleged militant or sectarian links.
In a recent high-level Punjab police meeting, commanders widened probes to include 2020 and 2021 cases of alleged attacks on officers during TLP protests, flagging repeat offenders for fresh charges alongside 2025 unrest. The session also directed reviews of earlier assaults on Christian and Ahmadi places of worship in Punjab that implicated the group.
Former Lahore investigation chief Imran Kishwar, now administrative DIG, has been assigned to oversee forensics: crime-scene work, fingerprints, DNA, geo-fencing, geo-mapping and call records. Kishwar led the inquiry into the May 9 riots last year.
Separately, Punjab has transferred control of 300 mosques and 125 seminaries once run by the TLP to moderate Sunni clerics. In Sahiwal, 12 TLP members were added to the Fourth Schedule by deputy commissioner order. The measures aim to cripple a group banned in 2022 yet persistent in mobilising street power over blasphemy and sectarian grievances.
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