Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

Lahore:

Pakistan’s Punjab government on Monday banned jailed former premier Imran Khan from meeting his family members, lawyers and party leaders till October 18 due to “security concerns”, amidst his party staging anti-government protests in several cities.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founder Khan has been lodged in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail in multiple cases since August 2023.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has accused PTI of trying to disrupt the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit scheduled to be held on Oct 15 and 16 in Islamabad and emphasised that the government will ensure that these plans do not succeed.

“Incarcerated PTI founder Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi have been banned from meeting their family, lawyers, and party leaders at Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi, till Oct 18,” a Punjab government official said.

The government has decided given “security concerns”, he said.

According to PTI sources, the government has decided in anticipation of the upcoming SCO summit.

The coalition government led by PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif has alleged that PTI is staging protests in Islamabad to sabotage the summit. The Pakistan Army has been called in to provide security for the SCO summit.

Earlier, security agencies arrested six Adiala jail staff for aiding the PTI founder.

Meanwhile, a PTI spokesperson said the legal team of Khan will file a petition in court, requesting the lifting of a ban on meetings with Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi. “Justice Sardar Ijaz of Islamabad High Court had ordered the authorities not too long ago to arrange meetings via video link, if not possible physically, given the number of cases Imran Khan has to deal with, legal consultation is given and, therefore should be provided,” he said.

PTI supporters held anti-government protests in several parts of Pakistan, including Islamabad, Lahore and Rawalpindi. 

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

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, right, with his wife Bushra Bibi, center, arrive to appear in a court in Lahore, Pakistan, on June 26, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

A court in Pakistan on July 14 handed over jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to the country’s anti-corruption officials on an eight-day remand for probe in a fresh case of alleged corruption.

The former first couple was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) soon after a district and sessions court on July 13 quashed their conviction in their un-Islamic marriage case.

The court’s short order also stated to release Khan and Bibi immediately unless they were wanted in other cases.

The NAB, which filed a new Toshakhana case against the couple, on July 14 presented them before Judge Muhammad Ali Warraich of the accountability court.

The judge conducted the hearing inside the Adiala Jail due to security reasons.

NAB Deputy Director Mohsin Haroon, who led the team to arrest them, requested their physical remand and the court, after hearing the lawyers, agreed to grant an eight-day remand.

The court then ordered to present the two on July 22.

The remand period can be extended to a maximum of 40 days at the request of NAB if it is needed to probe the suspects.

The new Toshakhana case is based on the accusation that the couple during Khan’s government purchased gifts from the state depository in violation of rules.

This is the third Toshakhana case and Khan’s sentence in the two previous Toshakhana cases had been suspended by the Islamabad High Court.

Last week, the Supreme Court in a key judgment declared that Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was eligible for the seats reserved for women and minorities in the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies.

The PTI will become the largest party in the National Assembly with 109 seats after the Supreme Court ruling.

Two successive victories for Khan were being interpreted as some kind of change of heart on the part of the powerful establishment towards the PTI and its founder, but the subsequent developments belie any such possibility.

Khan faces a slew of cases launched against him since his ouster from power in April 2022 after he fell out with the establishment which was believed to be instrumental in bringing him to power.

Chairman of Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party Gohar Khan, centre, celebrates with party supporters, after a court overturned the conviction and seven-year prison sentence of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife in Islamabad, Pakistan, on July 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A Pakistani court on July 13 overturned the conviction and seven-year prison sentence of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife in the case of the couple’s alleged 2018 unlawful marriage case, removing the last known hurdle in the way of his release nearly a year after he was jailed, lawyers said.

Naeem Panjutha, one of Mr. Khan’s lawyers, said the court announced the verdict in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where the former Premier is being held.

The acquittal comes two weeks after another appeals court upheld the February 5 conviction and sentence of Mr. Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi.

The court in its brief order said if the couple is not wanted in any other case, they should be released.

Ms. Bibi is Mr. Khan’s third wife and a spiritual healer. She was previously married to a man who claimed that they divorced in November 2017, less than three months before she married Mr. Khan. Islamic law, as upheld by Pakistan, requires a three-month waiting period before a new marriage.

Ms. Bibi has said they divorced in August 2017 and the couple insisted during the trial that they did not violate the waiting period.

It was unclear how the government would respond to the court order. Authorities have registered multiple cases against Mr. Khan since 2022 when he was ousted from power through a vote of no-confidence in the Parliament.

The latest development came a day after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the party of Mr. Khan was improperly denied at least 20 seats in parliament, in a significant blow to the country’s fragile governing coalition.

Mr. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was previously excluded from a system that gives parties extra seats reserved for women and minorities in the National Assembly, or lower house of the Parliament. Though the verdict was a major political win for Mr. Khan, it would not put his party in a position to oust the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came into power following a February 8 election that Mr. Khan allies say was rigged.

Mr. Khan has been embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting violence, since his arrest in May 2023. During nationwide riots that followed that, Mr. Khan’s supporters attacked the military and government buildings in various parts of the country and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest.

The violence subsided only when Mr. Khan was released by the Supreme Court. Mr. Khan was again arrested in early August 2023 after a court handed him a three-year jail sentence for corruption.

Since then, Mr. Khan has been given bail by different courts in all the cases in which he has been convicted.

Islamabad:

An accountability court in Islamabad barred former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, from issuing statements against state institutions and officials, The Express Tribune reported.

Judge Basir Javed Rana ordered the PTI founder and his spouse from speaking against state institutions in the courtroom during the hearing of a petition seeking a fair trial.

The court also ordered the media to avoid publishing such political provocative statements which target state institutions and their officials.

According to the order, the PTI chief made provocative political statements against senior officials of state institutions, including the army, the judiciary, and the army chief, as per The Express Tribune.

“Such statements disrupt judicial decorum and also obstruct judicial functions such as the dispensation of justice,” the order added.

In its order, the court also instructed the prosecution, the accused, and their defence counsels to not make political or inflammatory statements that may disrupt the decorum of the court.

Khan, who was PM from 2018-2022, remains jailed in multiple cases, including a 14-year jail sentence for him and his wife for the illegal sale of state gifts.

Khan was first imprisoned after being handed a three-year prison sentence in August 2023 by the Election Commission for not declaring assets earned from selling gifts worth more than PKR 140 million rupees (USD 501,000) in state possession and received during his premiership.

In January, Khan and wife Bushra Bibi were handed 14-year jail terms following a separate investigation by the country’s top anti-graft body into the same charges involving state gifts.

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