By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The chairman of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has demanded the immediate resumption of visits to the jailed former prime minister, saying restrictions on access to him have now lasted 375 days.
Barrister Gohar Ali Khan told reporters outside Parliament in Islamabad on Tuesday that the day was set aside for meetings with the party’s founder and that one should take place. “Today is the day for meeting the PTI founder, and the meeting should take place,” he said.
Keeping Khan in prison without letting him see his family amounted to “inhuman treatment”, Gohar said. He argued that the political climate might have eased had visits been held regularly, and that the ban had complicated political affairs while tensions and what he called victimisation of the party kept growing.
Khan, ousted as prime minister in 2022, has been held in Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail since August 2023. Gohar has repeatedly complained of being turned away at the gate. On 1 July he told reporters outside the prison that 36 weeks had passed without a meeting.
The PTI leader also accused the party’s opponents of exploiting the emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), the province the PTI governed until this month. He said the details would be laid before a meeting of the party’s senators and members of the National Assembly.
A day earlier he had said the party rejected both measures, while insisting it had no quarrel with the aim of defeating militancy. “You have imposed governor’s rule and an emergency, both of which we reject. Terrorism must be eliminated; there can be no two opinions on that,” he said. He alleged that the powers were being turned against the PTI instead of being used to tackle the province’s security problems.
President Asif Ali Zardari approved the measures on 11 October on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, after the federal cabinet signed off, invoking Articles 232 and 234 of the constitution. The army was authorised to assist the civil administration. The government cited rising attacks by militants, threats to life and property, and what it called a breakdown of constitutional order. Sharif has since accused the PTI-led provincial government of failing to act against militants. A joint sitting of Parliament approved the measures for two months on 15 October.
The intervention came as PTI supporters were marching on Islamabad to demand Khan’s release. Negotiating committees from the government and the opposition had met on 2 October, two days before the march was due to start. Interior minister Mohsin Naqvi later said the PTI had agreed during those talks to an emergency in 12 districts. The party now rejects both measures.
Gohar said on Tuesday that the party did not know where its chief minister was. The federal government has said Sohail Afridi and some members of his cabinet were placed in preventive custody, and a junior interior minister said he was being held under protective custody and had not been arrested. His whereabouts have not been officially disclosed, and his brother has asked the Peshawar High Court to establish where he is. Gohar said 12 PTI members of the National Assembly were also in detention.
The Peshawar High Court issued notices to the federal and provincial governments on 20 October on petitions challenging the measures, and adjourned the hearing until 10 November. Gohar is one of the petitioners.
He also condemned the 30-day extension of the detention of Mr Khan’s sisters. He described Aleema Khan as a non-political figure who had nevertheless been held for a further month. A petition before the Lahore High Court says the original 30-day orders for the three sisters expired on 19 and 20 October while they stayed in Kot Lakhpat jail, and the court has summoned the Punjab home secretary and the jail superintendent to appear on 28 October.
Gohar said the only way out of the dispute was negotiation. “Political problems can only be resolved through negotiations,” he said, calling for early and meaningful talks with the government.
Court rejects police request over lie-detector test
Separately, an anti-terrorism court in Lahore on Tuesday refused to give police more physical custody of the PTI leader Hammad Azhar and sent him to jail on judicial remand.
Azhar is accused in the Jinnah House case. Sarwar Road police booked several PTI leaders and workers on charges of attacking and vandalising the building, the Lahore corps commander’s residence, during the protests of 9 May 2023 that followed Mr Khan’s arrest. Police have told the court that Mr Azhar is wanted in 48 cases across the country.
The investigating officer asked for more time with the former finance minister so that police could carry out a polygraph test. Azhar’s lawyer, Barrister Abuzar Salman Niazi, said the test required the suspect’s consent. He told the court that, under a Lahore High Court judgment, it had to be carried out during judicial remand, and that the suspect must tell a magistrate whether he wished to take it.
Azhar said he did not want to take the test if the law allowed him to refuse it. A suspect should not be punished, he said, for the prosecution’s alleged ignorance of the legal requirements.
After hearing both sides, Judge Sardar Muhammad Akram Khan dismissed the request and ordered Azhar to Kot Lakhpat jail. Niazi welcomed the ruling on X, writing that his client’s “50-day physical remand finally ends”.
His family says Azhar was arrested on 5 September. Police said the next day that they knew nothing of an arrest, and he was produced before an anti-terrorism court on 7 September. His first remand of 21 days was extended at least twice, most recently by 12 days.
Azhar held several portfolios in the PTI government, among them finance, industries and energy. He went into hiding after the May 2023 crackdown on the party leadership and reappeared in public on 22 May 2024. In 2025 he repeated his decision to step down as president of the PTI’s Punjab chapter, citing a lack of access to Khan.
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