The Pakistani government has filed a legal challenge to a Supreme Court order directing prison authorities to move jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan to a private hospital in Islamabad for medical treatment.
The office of the chief commissioner in Islamabad filed the review petition on Wednesday, one day after the top court ordered that Khan be moved from Rawalpindi's Adiala Jail to Islamabad's Shifa International Hospital within two days, according to Al Jazeera.
The Supreme Court's original order directed authorities to form a medical board of five specialists and allow Khan's sister, Uzma Khan, and his personal physician, Faisal Sultan, to take part in his treatment. The court also granted Khan weekly family visits and phone calls twice a week with his two sons who live in London. It also barred Khan's family, political party, and lawyers from discussing his health publicly until the case is heard again on September 16.
The government's petition argued that the court skipped legal procedures by ordering the transfer without first hearing from prison authorities, and warned that other prisoners could demand similar treatment. Federal Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said in a video statement Tuesday night that the government wanted Khan examined at a public hospital. "This order does not fall within the legal parameters governing the facilities that can be provided to a convicted person in jail," he said.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on Wednesday accused Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party of having politicized the health of political rivals in the past. "History is witness that PTI people politicised the health of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's leadership," he said during a televised news conference. "Our leadership never said a word about the [PTI] founder's health," he said.
Khan, 73, has been in prison since August 2023 following convictions in several cases that he and his PTI party say were politically motivated. Over the past year, concerns about his health, particularly the vision in his right eye, have prompted repeated court appeals from his family and party. After the Supreme Court's order, Khan's wife, Bushra Bibi, visited him at Adiala Jail with their two children. His other sister, Noreen Niazi, also briefly visited him in her first meeting with him in nine months.
The case returns to court on September 16.
