Fact-check: Ex-cop's remarks falsely linked to Sohail Afridi

Online posts claim that former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ihsan Ghani revealed in an interview that Chief Minister Sohail Afridi had ordered him to kill two minors in a staged encounter, but he refused to comply.

The claim is false. IGP Ghani did say he had been asked by a senior official to kill two boys, but he did not identify the person who allegedly issued the order.

Claim

On October 22, a user on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared a two-minute-and-34-second clip from a news programme featuring a journalist interviewing former KP IGP Ghani.

“Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police Ihsan Ghani says that KP Chief Minister Sohail Afridi had instructed him to kill two young children in a fake encounter or through extrajudicial means, but he flatly refused to comply with the illegal order,” the caption read.

At the time of writing, the post had received 16,600 views, 530 likes and 210 reposts on X.

Fact

The video has been taken out of context and falsely linked to KP CM Afridi.

Geo Fact Check reviewed the full programme and located the segment from which the viral clip was taken at the 31:32 mark. During the interview, Ghani said: “No names, no places, nothing. I was asked by the highest office to kill two boys. I didn’t.”

Ghani did not name the person who allegedly issued the order or mention CM Afridi. The full programme can be viewed here.

Geo Fact Check also contacted Ghani, who rejected the claim linking the alleged order to Afridi. “I have never even met Sohail Afridi,” he said over the phone.

Ghani told Geo Fact Check that he served as KP’s inspector general of police from April to September 2013. He later served as national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) from 2015 to 2018. He said he retired in 2018 and does not currently hold any government office.

Ghani added that the incident he described in the interview dated back to the early years of his service.

According to the KP Police website, Ghani served as provincial police chief in 2013. Afridi, meanwhile, became chief minister on October 15, 2025, according to the Chief Minister’s Office website.

The dates establish that Ghani’s tenure as provincial police chief ended more than 12 years before CM Afridi took office.

It must be mentioned that even in the video posted online Ghani does not name now-dysfunctional CM Afridi.

Verdict: The video shows former KP police chief Ghani discussing an alleged order to kill two boys, but he does not identify who issued it. Ghani has explicitly rejected claims linking the incident to CM Afridi, saying he has never met him.

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