Piqued by officials' failure to submit replies to petitions challenging the detention of PTI leaders, including the chief minister, a Peshawar High Court (PHC) bench on Tuesday referred the matter to the chief justice, requesting the constitution of a larger bench to hear the case. Sohail Afridi - the non-functional Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chief minister - has not been seen since the imposition of governor's rule and emergency in K-P on Oct 11. His whereabouts remained unknown on the day governor's rule was imposed, and a federal minister confirmed a day later that he and some of his cabinet members were in preventive custody. Afridi's brother, Mohammad Aamir, filed one of the petitions, alleging that the non-functional chief minister had been "abducted" from the Chief Minister's House on the night the emergency was imposed. He approached the PHC on Oct 13. On Tuesday, a division bench comprising Justice Syed Arshad Ali and Justice Muhammad Faheem Wali referred the petitions to the chief justice after the provincial government and senior police officials failed to submit their replies in compliance with the court's Oct 20 directives. "These are not ordinary personalities," Justice Ali remarked during the hearing, adding that the chief minister of the province was missing. The bench observed that the respondents had been given 10 days to submit their replies but had failed to comply. "We refer this case to the chief justice to constitute a larger bench," Justice Ali said. The K-P advocate general also requested the formation of a larger bench. The petitions concern the alleged disappearance or detention of several other PTI leaders, including K-P Assembly Speaker Babar Saleem Swati, MNAs Junaid Akbar and Dr Amjid Ali, provincial minister Amjid Ali Khan, MPAs Ikramullah and Aurangzeb Khan, former Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister Mohammad Khalid Khursheed and several other party leaders. The PTI has alleged that the whereabouts of these leaders have not been disclosed by the government. Multiple petitions have been filed in the high court challenging their alleged detention. Meanwhile, K-P Advocate General Sanaullah Khan sought three days to submit the replies, saying his office was awaiting responses from the provincial home department, police and other law enforcement agencies. Bashir Vazir, counsel for the petitioners, alleged that the PTI leaders had been missing for several days. He argued that Article 199 of the Constitution empowered the high court to order the production of Afridi and Swati before it. He also referred to an immunity law passed by the K-P Assembly, arguing that assembly members could not be arrested in such a manner and that the speaker was also protected under the law. The law, he said, stipulated that the speaker would remain in office until a successor was elected. The advocate general said that in more than 200 cases involving detentions under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance (MPO), orders had been issued without hearings. The bench disagreed, observing that reports had been sought from the respondents in those cases but were never submitted. It also noted that the detentions under consideration in the present petitions were not MPO cases.