By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the party of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, announced on Wednesday it will hold rallies in cities across the country on Aug. 5, the date that will mark three full years since Khan’s arrest set off one of the most turbulent chapters in the nation’s recent political history.
The decision emerged from a meeting of the party’s parliamentary wing at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa House in Islamabad, chaired by Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, PTI’s interim chairman. Though the session had been called to address routine parliamentary business, Gohar told reporters afterward that the country’s broader political crisis dominated the discussion instead.
“Our meeting had one agenda, but the entire national situation came under discussion,” he said.
Khan, 74, has been in custody since Aug. 5, 2023, when he was arrested after a court convicted him of illegally selling state gifts he received while in office — a case that became known as the Toshakhana affair — and sentenced him to three years in prison. He has remained behind bars nearly continuously since, even as some of the numerous other cases brought against him have been suspended, overturned, or left in legal limbo. Khan denies wrongdoing in all of them.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Gohar framed the coming demonstrations as a statement about the passage of time itself: three years in which, he said, the party’s founder has yet to receive what it considers a fair hearing.
“Every PTI member of the assembly believes the founder’s imprisonment is unjust,” Gohar said, noting that the party has pursued appeals through the courts but is still awaiting rulings.
He said the demonstrations — which will include public meetings, marches, and a long march, according to PTI General Secretary Salman Akram Raja — would have a different character than the party’s previous rounds of protest, though he did not elaborate on specifics. Raja told the newspaper Dawn that the party intends to consult two allied opposition figures, Mahmood Khan Achakzai and Allama Raja Nasir Abbas, before finalising its plans. A joint announcement on strategy is expected from PTI’s political committee and its opposition alliance partners in the coming weeks, Gohar said.
The announcement follows a similar call to action from Khan’s sister, Aleema Khan, who addressed party workers in Lower Dir, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on July 12. She told the gathering that the moment had arrived for PTI to press harder for “justice and accountability,” and urged rank-and-file members to hold party lawmakers to account — including, she said, by pressuring them to leave their homes and join the movement in person.
A health case that has shadowed the political one
Alongside the legal and political questions surrounding Khan’s imprisonment, his family and party have for months pressed a separate, more personal concern: the state of his health inside Adiala jail, where they say he has lacked basic necessities.
That concern came into sharper focus last month, when Khan was taken from the prison to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for a scheduled follow-up procedure — his fifth intravitreal injection as part of ongoing treatment for an eye condition, according to a statement from the hospital’s administration.
Khan has been diagnosed with central retinal vein occlusion, a condition in which the principal vein carrying blood from the retina becomes obstructed, according to a report filed with the Supreme Court by his lawyer and by Salman Safdar, the court-appointed amicus curiae in the case. The condition is frequently linked to underlying cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease.
Gohar said the parliamentary party had also discussed the health of Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, who remains imprisoned alongside him.
A boycott, unchanged
Separately on Wednesday, PTI moved to correct what it characterised as inaccurate reporting on another front: its ongoing boycott of parliamentary standing committees.
Malik Amir Dogar, the party’s chief whip in the National Assembly, said reports suggesting PTI had quietly ended the boycott, or notified the National Assembly Secretariat of such a decision, were false. The boycott, he said, began on Khan’s direct instructions and remains the party’s “principled position.”
“Any decision to either end or continue the boycott will be made only after a meeting and consultation with the founding chairman,” Amir said.
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