ISLAMABAD — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has asked the Supreme Court to hold the government in contempt over the hospital transfer of its jailed founder, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, while 22 former international cricket captains have renewed their appeal for him to receive the medical treatment the court ordered, according to Al Jazeera and Pakistani media reports.
The dispute turns on an August 18 Supreme Court order directing that Khan be taken to the private Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad for a comprehensive medical examination, by a board that includes his physician sister, Dr Uzma Khan, and that he remain there until mid-September. Instead, Khan was taken under heavy security just after midnight to the state-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), examined there for a few hours, and returned early the next morning to Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. The government said a team of qualified doctors declared him medically fit.
PTI lawyers Salman Akram Raja and Uzair Bhandari filed the contempt petition, asking the court to issue show-cause notices, require those responsible to appear personally, and order Khan’s immediate transfer to Shifa. A subsequent application by Dr Uzma Khan for an early hearing was not granted, and the matter has since been caught in a jurisdictional dispute after related records were summoned by the Federal Constitutional Court — a deadlock Pakistani legal commentators say has prolonged uncertainty over Khan’s treatment.
Separately, 22 former international captains — including India’s Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar, Sri Lanka’s Arjuna Ranatunga, and Clive Lloyd, Greg Chappell, Allan Border and Alastair Cook — wrote to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appealing for Khan to be allowed family visits, as the court directed, and for any court-recommended treatment to be provided without delay. The cricketers said they wrote as former colleagues and rivals, not as politicians. No Pakistani cricketer joined the appeal. It follows an earlier letter in February by 14 former captains seeking more humane treatment for Khan.
The medical dispute runs alongside a wider confrontation. On October 11, President Asif Ali Zardari declared emergency rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, suspending the PTI-led provincial government over what the federal government called a failure to tackle militancy; the province’s chief minister, Sohail Afridi, and cabinet members were taken into preventive custody, and hundreds of PTI supporters were detained, according to Reuters. PTI calls the emergency a pretext for a political takeover, which the government denies.
Khan, 74, led Pakistan from 2018 to 2022 and has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges he denies. What happens next depends on which court takes up the contempt petition and whether the ordered medical board is allowed to complete its work — the narrow question on which PTI, the government and now a group of the game’s most famous former captains are all, in different ways, pressing for an answer.