RAWALPINDI — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan met his lawyer at Adiala jail on Monday for the first time in seven months, in a 40-minute meeting that his counsel said was far too short to cover the couple’s many cases, according to reporting by Dawn and Dunya News.
Barrister Salman Safdar met the jailed former prime minister and his wife, Bushra Bibi, at the jail in Rawalpindi at about 4:30 p.m. on Monday. In a post on X, Safdar said jail authorities had facilitated the meeting after repeated applications and requests. It was his first meeting with Khan in seven months and his first with Bushra Bibi in 11 months. "Session was insufficient to cover all cases / legal matters," he wrote, saying both had briefed him on their situation.
Access to Khan has been one of the central disputes of his imprisonment. PTI and his family say meetings with relatives, party leaders and lawyers have remained largely restricted in recent months despite repeated court directions permitting them. In September, the Islamabad High Court directed jail authorities to end the isolation of Khan and Bushra Bibi and to provide the facilities set out in the prison rules, according to reporting on the order.
Khan has been in jail since August 5, 2023, when he was arrested after his conviction in the Toshakhana case over state gifts. He and Bushra Bibi were also convicted in another Toshakhana-related case in December 2025, receiving sentences of 10 years and seven years respectively, according to the reporting. He faces further cases, including cases linked to the riots of May 9, 2023, that followed his first arrest.
The meeting came on a busy day for the party’s legal and political battles. In Lahore, the High Court summoned the Lahore deputy commissioner to appear on Wednesday, November 4, in the case over the continued detention of Khan’s three sisters, Aleema Khan, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, and ordered that Noreen Niazi’s two daughters be allowed to meet her on Tuesday morning for one hour, according to court reporting. The sisters have been held since September under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance.
Separately, PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan on Monday rejected claims by party leader Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif about efforts to arrange a meeting with Khan, saying the party had tried through the courts and through negotiations and had not been allowed a single meeting. PTI’s political committee, in a statement the same day, dismissed reports of internal divisions, demanded the release of detained party figures, and linked any party decision on a proposed 28th constitutional amendment to a meeting with Khan, according to reporting on the statement.
What happens next turns on access as much as on any single case. Safdar’s meeting shows the jail authorities can facilitate legal access when they choose to; whether such meetings become regular, as PTI and the family demand, will be tested in the hearings ahead, starting with the Lahore proceedings on Wednesday.
