By Staff Repotrter
ISLAMABAD: The government was on Thursday night facing accusations of contempt of court after it failed to move jailed former prime minister Imran Khan to a private hospital in Islamabad, hours before a Supreme Court deadline was due to expire.
The Supreme Court had ordered on Tuesday that Khan, the founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, be transferred to Shifa International Hospital within 48 hours so that a specially convened medical board could examine and treat him. That deadline fell at midnight on Thursday. By nightfall, the former prime minister remained in Adiala jail on the outskirts of the capital, where he has been held since August 2023.
The government had attempted to head off the transfer by lodging a review petition on Wednesday, arguing that the court’s order was discriminatory and had been issued without regard to prison regulations. But the Supreme Court’s registrar office returned that petition on Thursday, citing incomplete paperwork, throwing the government’s legal position into further disarray and prompting furious claims from PTI that ministers had simply run out of road.
Salman Akram Raja, PTI’s secretary general, seized on the registrar’s decision, telling reporters the state had “withdrawn its review petition” once objections were raised. “There is no excuse whatsoever for not complying with the SC order of Aug 18,” he said. “Imran Khan sahib must be transferred to Shifa International Hospital forthwith. Today is the day.”
Government officials disputed that characterisation, insisting the petition had merely been sent back for technical reasons and would be refiled. A source close to the matter indicated the petition would be resubmitted with amendments, alongside a fresh appeal against the registrar’s objections.
‘No deadline’, says PM’s aide, as government waits on review
Rana Sanaullah, adviser to the prime minister on political affairs, told journalists at Parliament House that there was, in his view, no fixed deadline for the transfer and that the government’s review petition needed to be settled first. “The government has again filed the review petition and expects a decision today or tomorrow,” he said. “Let the decision on the review petition filed by the government come. This will make things clear.”
Asked about the petition being bounced back by the registrar’s office, Sanaullah said simply: “I think it has been refiled.”
He argued the government’s objections were not merely procedural but went to the heart of how the justice system functions. “Thousands of applications can be filed tomorrow, and then the Supreme Court’s decision is binding for the subordinate courts,” he said. “In that case, will those thousand people also be transferred to private hospitals? The subordinate court has no power to review the decision against the decision of the Supreme Court.”
Law minister Azam Nazeer Tarar added that the government technically had until midnight to complete the transfer, and that responsibility for carrying it out rested with the Islamabad administration, which he said was working on it.
Sanaullah also pointed to the precedent of Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister and leader of the ruling PML-N, who was moved from prison to a government hospital before a medical board recommended he be allowed to seek treatment abroad — permission the government subsequently granted.
Court’s original order followed warnings over blood pressure and anxiety
The transfer order stems from a hearing on Tuesday before a three-member bench headed by Justice Shahid Waheed, sitting with Justices Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Ishtiaq Ibrahim, which was considering petitions on Mr Khan’s access to hospital care, his personal physicians and his family, as well as the release of his medical records.
The bench acted after a medical board report and a submission from the Adiala jail superintendent, filed with the court on Monday, recommended more frequent contact between Mr Khan and his immediate family to help manage his blood pressure and anxiety.
The court ordered that Khan’s personal physician, Dr Faisal Sultan, be given access to him, and directed the formation of a medical board made up of an eye specialist, a general physician and a cardiologist, working alongside Dr Sultan. His sister, Dr Uzma Khan, was also named to the board. The family was ordered to bear the cost of his treatment.
Justice Afghan was firm that the arrangement should not become a platform for politics. “Do not engage in politics outside the hospital,” he told the court, adding: “There are other patients in the hospital” who should not be disrupted. Raja and PTI parliamentary secretary Shahid Khattak assured the bench that no political activity would take place at the hospital. “Our political activities will remain completely separate,” Raja said.
The judges also ordered that Mr Khan’s medical reports be kept strictly confidential and barred from being shared with the media or used for political purposes, a condition Justice Afghan underlined directly. “We assure the court that the medical report will remain completely confidential,” Mr Raja told the bench. The court additionally ordered that arrangements be made for Khan to speak by telephone with his children, and warned that the entire order could be withdrawn if any of its conditions were breached.
Government brands order ‘discriminatory’, ministers question special treatment
The government’s review petition, filed on Wednesday through the Islamabad chief commissioner under Article 188 of the constitution and lodged by advocate general Naveed Hayat Malik, rests on the argument that the court’s original order overlooked Rule 197 of the Pakistan Prison Rules 1978, which sets out the procedure for transferring a prisoner to hospital. Had that rule been considered, the petition argued, the order “could not have been passed”.
The petition further argued that treating a convicted prisoner at a private hospital — on the basis of a report that did not point to any condition requiring immediate treatment — risked destabilising the wider criminal justice system, and that it breached the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment under Article 25 by giving Khan access to care not available to other prisoners in comparable circumstances.
That argument was echoed publicly by government ministers. At a press conference on Wednesday, information minister Attaullah Tarar said the PML-N had “never politicised health matters”, contrasting this with what he described as PTI’s history of making political statements about the health of PML-N figures. He said Khan had already received medical care in custody and would continue to do so “in accordance with prison rules and legal provisions”. “There is no ambiguity regarding his treatment,” Tarar said, adding that facilities were being provided under the jail manual and that health should remain separate from politics.
Minister of state for interior Tallal Chaudhry, appearing alongside him, went further, alleging that Mr Khan was now playing a “sympathy card” having exhausted other tactics, and asking why those who had made health a political issue had not instead focused on performance.
PTI’s central media department dismissed the ministers’ remarks as “irresponsible, insensitive and shameful”, accusing the government of turning Khan’s health into a subject for “political debate and point-scoring” rather than complying with the court. The party said Supreme Court orders were not subject to the government’s preferences and urged ministers to implement the ruling rather than contest it through press briefings.
Separately, in the Senate, parliamentary affairs minister Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry told lawmakers the government would be obliged to arrange treatment for Mr Khan at Shifa International Hospital, or an even better-equipped facility, if government hospitals could not provide what he needed. Responding to a point of order from opposition leader in the Senate, Raja Nasir Abbas, he said the government had no intention of obstructing Mr Khan’s medical treatment and had made clear it would implement the Supreme Court’s ruling. He said a legal question over the scope of such arrangements remained before the court for clarification, and that the government would comply with whatever the court decided. He also addressed concerns over the health of jailed PTI leader Dr Yasmin Rashid, saying the government would again raise her case with the Punjab government and prison authorities and would ensure all facilities permitted under jail rules were made available to her.
Lawyer to file contempt petition, accuses government of ‘stubbornness’
With the deadline unmet, Khan’s lawyer, Khalid Yousaf Chaudhry, said on Thursday he intended to file a contempt of court petition against the government. “The government is violating the court order in the matter of Imran’s transfer to the hospital,” he wrote in a post on X. “The government is bound to transfer Imran to the hospital within two days; if the court order is not implemented, we will file a contempt of court petition in the SC. By showing stubbornness, the government is committing contempt of court.”
Chaudhry said he had travelled to Adiala jail to obtain Mr Khan’s signature on the contempt petition and accompanying power of attorney documents. “We will file a contempt of court petition in any case,” he added.
Now 73, Khan has been in custody since August 2023 on charges he and his party maintain are politically motivated. He was removed from office in April 2022 after losing a no-confidence vote in parliament, and has since faced a string of legal cases.
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