Islamabad:

A Pakistani court indicted imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife on fresh charges of illegally selling state gifts on Thursday, local broadcaster Geo reported.

The indictment was the latest in dozens of cases against the 72-year-old former cricket star, who has been in jail since late last year.

Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have already been granted bail in the case, which is one of a series of state treasury charges known as “Toshakhana”.

These charges revolve around allegations that Khan and his wife illegally procured and then sold gifts worth more than 140 million rupees ($501,000) in state possession, which he received during his 2018-22 premiership. They have denied committing an offence.

Khan and Bibi were both handed a 14-year sentence on those charges days before a national election earlier this year, following a three-year sentence handed to him in late 2023 in another version of the same case.

However, their sentences have been suspended in appeals at the high court.

The gifts included diamond jewellery and seven watches, six of them Rolexes – the most expensive being valued at 85 million rupees ($305,000).

Earlier this month, Khan was also indicted on charges of inciting attacks against the military, a case stemming from deadly anti-government rallies led by his party last year.

Bibi also led a deadly protest march by thousands of supporters in the capital Islamabad on Nov. 25, escalating a face-off with the government and its military backers.

Khan has been fighting court cases since he was ousted from power in 2022. He and his party say the cases were made up to keep him out of politics at the behest of the military after he had fallen out with the army’s generals. The army denies the accusation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Rawalpindi:

A Rawalpindi accountability court has issued non-bailable arrest warrants for Bushra Bibi, the wife of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan, in connection with the GBP 190 million corruption case linked to the Al-Qadir University Trust, ARY News reported.

The court, presided over by Judge Nasir Javed Rana, issued the arrest warrants following the ongoing investigation into the alleged financial discrepancies involving the former prime minister and his family.

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was also presented before the court in connection with the case. Despite the new arrest warrants, both Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi had previously been granted bail by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in relation to the National Crime Agency (NCA) settlement reference concerning the GBP 190 million.

The IHC’s two-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, had reserved its verdict after hearing the case. In a short order, the court had instructed the authorities to release Imran Khan against a surety bond of PKR 1 million, reported ARY News.

Meanwhile, Bushra Bibi, in a separate development, issued a video message urging PTI supporters to participate in the party’s planned protest on November 24. She referred to the protest as a “final or do-or-die” call, urging party workers to rally against the government.

She claimed that negative propaganda against her family started after their visit to Madinah, Saudi Arabia, followed by calls for her character assassination and accusations against her husband, Imran Khan, of being a “Jewish agent.”

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had launched an investigation into the alleged gain of hundreds of acres of land under the Al-Qadir University Trust, with the claim that it caused a loss of GBP 190 million to the national treasury.

According to the charges, Imran Khan and others accused in the case allegedly misallocated PKR 50 billion (equivalent to GBP 190 million at the time) that had been sent by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to the Pakistani government, ARY News reported.

In response, NAB filed a corruption reference involving Imran Khan, his wife Bushra Bibi, and six other individuals related to the Al-Qadir University project, which was registered on December 26, 2019.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)