Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered Imran Khan out of jail and into hospital. ESPNcricinfo reports the former Pakistan captain, now 73, was taken to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad in the early hours of Friday, with heavy security around the move. Nobody has said how long he will be there.
The order came on Tuesday from a bench of three led by Justice Shahid Waheed, which told the government to have him seen and treated by a medical board drawn from several disciplines. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, had petitioned for exactly that, arguing his health was deteriorating. That is the ground the party pleaded rather than a doctor’s finding, and this piece does not treat it as one. PTI confirmed the transfer once it happened.
Ministers are contesting where he is treated rather than whether. Their argument, as the report puts it, is that a hospital he chose himself would be discriminatory. A review they lodged came back from the court registrar over incomplete paperwork, and Dawn says they may lodge another with changes and challenge those objections.
Claims about his condition have been made on his behalf since February, and one of them is worth marking as a claim. His party claimed an untreated condition had cut the sight in his right eye to 15 percent. Visits to the state hospital, PIMS, have been repeated and short.
Cricket has already put its name to this. Greg Chappell, Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev were among fourteen former international captains who wrote to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif this year, asking that he be handled with “dignity and basic human consideration”.
He has been held at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi since August 2023. The sentences he is serving are for corruption, and both he and his party deny those charges.