On Friday, PTI leaders once again expressed serious concern over the health of jailed party founder and former prime minister Imran Khan and demanded his immediate treatment at the Islamabad Shifa International Hospital. Addressing the media, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister Sohail Afridi said the party made every possible constitutional and legal effort to ensure that Imran receives treatment in the presence of his family and doctors, but their requests were not accepted.
"Imran Khan is not an ordinary individual; he is a former Prime Minister of Pakistan," Afridi said. The former prime minister has been detained in Rawalpindi’s Adiala prison since September 2023. He criticized the government for lacking a clear economic policy and accused it of preventing Imran from receiving medical treatment and limiting his meetings with family members and doctors. PTI leader Junaid Akbar said the current regional situation is tense and warned that increasing hostility between the public and state institutions could be dangerous.
"If Imran Khan’s health condition is not serious, why are his sisters not allowed to meet him?" he asked. Former federal law minister Babar Awan claimed that Imran Khan’s illness had been concealed for almost two and a half months, which he described as a criminal act. He claimed that the delay in medical treatment caused serious damage to the former prime minister’s eyesight.
"Earlier former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sought treatment abroad but we only demand that Imran Khan be shifted to Shifa Hospital in Islamabad," he said. PTI leader Shahid Khattak said the party has little faith in the current medical arrangements and demanded that Imran Khan receive treatment at Shifa Hospital with access to his family and personal doctors. Former provincial minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra also warned that the regional situation has turned serious, citing tensions involving Iran and Israel. He stressed that it was his fundamental right to provide proper medical treatment to Imran Khan in the presence of his family and doctors. Afridi concluded by saying that PTI’s demands are constitutional and legal, adding that the party looks to the courts for justice and that peaceful protest remains its constitutional right. On Wednesday, a meeting of the joint opposition parliamentary party passed a unanimous resolution demanding the immediate release of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan. The resolution expressed serious concern over Imran Khan’s state of health, noting that he has reportedly been shifted twice for treatment to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences due to lack of adequate medical facilities in the prison. It also pointed to the absence of a retina specialist at the hospital and claimed that despite worsening vision in his right eye, access to his personal doctors and family members remained limited. In view of his deteriorating health and the need for immediate medical attention, it demanded his immediate release under Rules 143, 145, 146, 197 and 795 of the Pakistan Jail Rules, read with Section 401 of the Criminal Procedure Code, citing precedents where similar emergency relief had been granted to a previously convicted former prime minister.
