By Staff Reporter
In the dim confines of Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail, where former prime minister Imran Khan has been held since 2023, the latest chapter in his long ordeal unfolds not in the courtroom but in the cold beam of an ophthalmologist’s lamp. There is something profoundly unsettling about a former prime minister losing his sight in prison. Not in the dramatic, cinematic sense of a sudden affliction, but in the slow, grinding way that speaks of neglect and denial. For Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician who once commanded Pakistan’s streets with the fervour of a rock star, this latest twist in his two-and-a-half-year incarceration is a grim reminder of how power operates in this fractured democracy.
On Sunday, a medical board of two senior eye specialists examined the 73-year-old, diagnosing a condition that has left his right eye compromised by central retinal vein occlusion, or CRVO. The findings, detailed in a two-page report released on Monday, paint a picture of partial recovery amid persistent damage: unaided vision in the right eye at 6/24 partial, improving to 6/9 partial with glasses; the left eye holding steady at 6/9 unaided and a crisp 6/6 corrected. The report is clinical, almost reassuring in its precision. The board noted “substantially good vision at this stage”, with the right eye’s acuity up from an earlier 6/36.
By any measure, this is progress, even from authorities long distrusted. Yet his family, his PTI party and his personal physicians remain unconvinced, their demands for independent scrutiny met with the familiar stonewall of state opacity. The examination took place without them present – despite repeated requests – and they have rejected the process outright, branding it “malicious” and conducted in “secrecy”.
The facts, as they stand, are stark enough. Khan, who entered prison with perfect 6/6 vision in both eyes as recently as October 2025, has seen his world blur and darken. A court-appointed lawyer Salman Safdar’s report earlier this month painted a grimmer picture: persistent complaints of hazy vision ignored for months, culminating in a diagnosis that left him with just 15% sight in the affected eye. An injection in late January at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences offered some relief, but the damage, one suspects, was already done. And this is where the official narrative begins to unravel. His longtime physician, Dr Asim Yusuf, who joined a phone briefing with the specialists, voiced the unease that lingers: he cannot confirm the improvement because he has not laid eyes on his patient. “I would be extremely happy if I was able to confirm that this was the case,” he said in a video statement. “Unfortunately, because I have not seen him myself… I am unable to either confirm or deny.” Yusuf had listened as the doctors recounted the timeline: symptoms emerging in October, when Khan’s vision was still 6/6 in both eyes; an injection administered at PIMS on 24 January after the CRVO diagnosis; and now, apparent improvement.
For months, reports of Khan’s deteriorating eyesight have filtered out of Adiala, a facility better known for housing high-profile detainees than state-of-the-art medical care. In conversations relayed through Safdar’s seven-page submission to the court, Khan himself described “persistent blurred and hazy vision” since last October – a “visibly perturbed” state made worse by what he saw as “no timely or adequate medical intervention”. It is a plea born not of paranoia but of a pattern: access to Khan rationed like a scarce resource, his sisters turned away, his lawyers kept at arm’s length.
For Khan’s supporters, this is not mere medical mismanagement; it is political theatre at its most cynical. Health, in such a context, becomes a weapon: deny timely care, control the narrative, and let doubt fester. The Supreme Court’s intervention – mandating the exam, receiving reports – offers a faint glimmer of judicial spine, but even that feels performative when the broader machinery of incarceration remains opaque. Family visits barred for months. Independent oversight nowhere to be seen. Just the state’s word, and the implication that questioning it is tantamount to sedition.
Khan has been a lightning rod since his ouster in 2022, his convictions in cases ranging from corruption to state secrets widely viewed by his supporters as vendettas orchestrated by the military-civilian nexus that has long pulled Pakistan’s strings. Adiala, perched in the shadow of Rawalpindi’s military headquarters, is no ordinary lock-up. It is a fortress where high-profile detainees are held, their fates intertwined with the whims of the powerful. For months, Khan’s family has begged for his transfer to a facility like Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, where specialists could work under transparent conditions. Instead, the state offers prison-side check-ups and assurances that ring hollow against the backdrop of road blockades in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, sit-ins outside parliament and a province simmering with unrest.
Pakistan’s democracy, such as it is, has always been fragile. Elections marred by allegations of rigging, a judiciary navigating military influence, a media cowed by censorship – these are not new. But in the age of Khan, the personal has become the political with ferocious intensity. His health, now a national spectacle, tests the state’s claim to legitimacy. If a former prime minister can be left to navigate vision loss in a prison cell, what does that say for the thousands of lesser-known detainees?
As Khan awaits further treatment – perhaps in a “specialised facility”, as vaguely promised by ministers – the question hangs heavier than ever: in a country where trust is in short supply and the powerful evade scrutiny, who, then, guards the guardians? Transparency in Khan care is not a favour to a political foe, nor a concession to his critics; it is the barest test of a state’s claim to legitimacy. Without it, the vision loss in one eye risks deepening the shadows over a democracy that, for all its flaws, still aspires to see clearly.
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