By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan will take up a contempt of court petition next month accusing the government of defying a judicial order to transfer imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan to a private hospital for medical treatment, according to court filings and officials familiar with the case.
The petition, filed by Khan’s sister, Dr. Uzma Khan, will be heard Sept. 16 — the same date already set aside for the three-judge Supreme Court bench to resume a separate set of hearings over Khan’s health and his family’s access to him in prison. Because the same panel is available that day, the contempt case is expected to be folded into the broader proceedings, according to a person familiar with the court’s scheduling who was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.
The dispute traces back to Aug. 18, when the bench — led by Justice Shahid Waheed and including Justices Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Ishtiaq Ibrahim — ordered that Khan be moved from Adiala Jail to Shifa International Hospital, a private facility in Islamabad, so a medical board could examine him. The judges also directed that Dr. Uzma Khan and Dr. Faisal Sultan, Khan’s personal physician, be present for the examination.
The government did not comply. Instead, authorities took the 73-year-old former prime minister to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, a state-run hospital, where he underwent a limited examination before being returned to prison within hours.
Government officials have defended the decision. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the switch in venue was made because of security concerns after Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf supporters gathered outside Shifa International and along routes leading to it. Tarar said doctors from Shifa were brought to the government facility instead, and that Khan’s sister was permitted to be present, satisfying what he described as the substance of the court’s order.
The contempt petition disputes that characterisation. It alleges that Khan received only a routine eye examination, an eye injection, and a blood-pressure check — not the full evaluation by a multidisciplinary medical board that the court had ordered.
Getting the case in front of the court proved its own complication. A person with knowledge of the court’s internal workings said the petition could not be scheduled quickly because 94 other criminal original petitions in the same case category were already pending before various Supreme Court benches, and court policy generally requires cases to be heard in the order they were filed. That backlog made it unlikely the contempt petition would have been reached soon on its own, the person said — but its pairing with the already-scheduled Sept. 16 hearing effectively moved it forward.
Dr. Uzma Khan had pushed for a faster timeline regardless. On Tuesday, she filed a separate application asking the court to take up the contempt case immediately, arguing that further delay risked irreparable harm to her brother’s life and health and that the Aug. 18 order remained legally binding unless the court explicitly stayed it. That request for an early hearing was not granted; the registrar’s office instead ordered the case fixed for Sept. 16 alongside the underlying matter.
The path to Tuesday’s filing also included a procedural setback. Court officials initially returned Dr. Khan’s contempt petition earlier in the day, citing office objections — chief among them that copies of the petition and formal notices had not been sent to the respondents named in the case, including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan told reporters outside the court that he learned of the rejection directly from the Supreme Court registrar, who had come to the facilitation center on the court’s premises. Gohar said the party would correct the deficiencies and refile.
It did so later Tuesday. The amended petition, filed on Khan’s behalf by PTI Secretary-General Salman Akram Raja and lawyer Uzair Bhandari, named seven respondents: Prime Minister Sharif, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, Interior Secretary Ahmed Raza Sarwar, Punjab Inspector General of Prisons Mian Salik Jalal, Islamabad Chief Commissioner Sohail Ashraf, a retired lieutenant, and Adiala Jail Superintendent Sajid Baig.
One question left unresolved is whether the Sept. 16 hearing will also take up a separate review petition filed by the Islamabad chief commissioner, who is challenging the legal basis for the original order sending Khan to a private hospital. That petition argues, in part, that the directive was discriminatory. Court officials have not said whether it will be consolidated with the other matters that day.
Khan has been jailed since August 2023 on a series of convictions that he and his party have long characterized as politically motivated. He was ousted from office in April 2022 after losing a no-confidence vote in Parliament, and has faced a continuous string of legal proceedings since.
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