PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court on Wednesday temporarily stopped law enforcement agencies from arresting or deporting 17 Afghan doctors serving in two private hospitals of the provincial capital and allowed them to continue their postgraduate training here.

A bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Kamran Hayat Miankhel issued notices to the federal government and Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), seeking their response to a petition jointly filed by 17 trainee medical officers (TMOs) including Mohammad Idrees and others.

The petitioners are TMOs in two private hospitals namely Peshawar General Hospital and North-West Hospital and Research Centre.

They have sought multiple reliefs from the court. They have requested the court to declare illegal that the two impugned letters issued by PMDC on July 31, 2026, and Sept 1, 2026, insofar as they required the petitioners to discontinue their ongoing FCPS postgraduate training and/or immediately leave Pakistan, as illegal, arbitrary and of no legal effect.

Bench seeks response of govt, PMDC to their petition

They have also challenged the consequential circulars issued on Sept 2, 2026, by the said two hospitals for discontinuation of their duties/FCPS training, requesting the court to declare the same as illegal.

They sought directives of the court for the management of the two hospitals to forthwith restore and allow the petitioners to smoothly continue their respective FCPS postgraduate training, clinical rotations, duties and all consequential training activities, without interruption merely on account of the impugned PMDC letters/circulars or pendency of their visa-extension applications.

The petitioners sought directives for the federal government and the director general immigration and passport to forthwith process and decide their pending visa-extension/renewal applications.

Advocates Tariq Afghan and Sajeed Khan Afridi represented the petitioners, while an assistant attorney general appeared on behalf of the federal government.

Advocate Tariq Afghan stated that the petitioners were Afghan nationals and medical doctors, who lawfully entered Pakistan on valid student visas for the purpose of postgraduate medical education and training under the Fellowship of College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (FCPS) programme.

He said that the petitioners were aggrieved by the unlawful interruption of their ongoing postgraduate medical training pursuant to the impugned letters issued by PMDC and consequential circulars issued by the two hospitals, besides the continued failure of competent authorities to decide their pending visa-extension applications.

He said that the petitioners had successfully qualified the requisite FCPS examinations/parts and were thereafter duly inducted into various FCPS postgraduate training programmes in recognised teaching hospitals under the supervision and regulatory framework of College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP).

The counsel stated that petitioners’ induction and training were undertaken pursuant to arrangements/memorandum of understanding between the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He stated that the petitioners had duly applied for extension/renewal of their visas before competent authorities and submitted their passports, previous visas, CPSP documents, hospital training certificates and other prescribed documents.

He said that despite completion of the prescribed formalities, the visa-extension applications of petitioners remained pending for an unreasonable period.

The counsel stated that during the pendency of visa-extension applications, PMDC issued the two impugned letters, requiring Afghan doctors to immediately return to Afghanistan.

He contended that PMDC lacked the authority to take such steps and noted that other high courts had already suspended PMDC’s directives, allowing Afghan students to continue their education.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2026