Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, right, with his wife Bushra Bibi, center, arrive to appear in a court in Lahore, Pakistan, on June 26, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

A court in Pakistan on July 14 handed over jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to the country’s anti-corruption officials on an eight-day remand for probe in a fresh case of alleged corruption.

The former first couple was arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) soon after a district and sessions court on July 13 quashed their conviction in their un-Islamic marriage case.

The court’s short order also stated to release Khan and Bibi immediately unless they were wanted in other cases.

The NAB, which filed a new Toshakhana case against the couple, on July 14 presented them before Judge Muhammad Ali Warraich of the accountability court.

The judge conducted the hearing inside the Adiala Jail due to security reasons.

NAB Deputy Director Mohsin Haroon, who led the team to arrest them, requested their physical remand and the court, after hearing the lawyers, agreed to grant an eight-day remand.

The court then ordered to present the two on July 22.

The remand period can be extended to a maximum of 40 days at the request of NAB if it is needed to probe the suspects.

The new Toshakhana case is based on the accusation that the couple during Khan’s government purchased gifts from the state depository in violation of rules.

This is the third Toshakhana case and Khan’s sentence in the two previous Toshakhana cases had been suspended by the Islamabad High Court.

Last week, the Supreme Court in a key judgment declared that Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was eligible for the seats reserved for women and minorities in the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies.

The PTI will become the largest party in the National Assembly with 109 seats after the Supreme Court ruling.

Two successive victories for Khan were being interpreted as some kind of change of heart on the part of the powerful establishment towards the PTI and its founder, but the subsequent developments belie any such possibility.

Khan faces a slew of cases launched against him since his ouster from power in April 2022 after he fell out with the establishment which was believed to be instrumental in bringing him to power.

Chairman of Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party Gohar Khan, centre, celebrates with party supporters, after a court overturned the conviction and seven-year prison sentence of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife in Islamabad, Pakistan, on July 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A Pakistani court on July 13 overturned the conviction and seven-year prison sentence of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife in the case of the couple’s alleged 2018 unlawful marriage case, removing the last known hurdle in the way of his release nearly a year after he was jailed, lawyers said.

Naeem Panjutha, one of Mr. Khan’s lawyers, said the court announced the verdict in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where the former Premier is being held.

The acquittal comes two weeks after another appeals court upheld the February 5 conviction and sentence of Mr. Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi.

The court in its brief order said if the couple is not wanted in any other case, they should be released.

Ms. Bibi is Mr. Khan’s third wife and a spiritual healer. She was previously married to a man who claimed that they divorced in November 2017, less than three months before she married Mr. Khan. Islamic law, as upheld by Pakistan, requires a three-month waiting period before a new marriage.

Ms. Bibi has said they divorced in August 2017 and the couple insisted during the trial that they did not violate the waiting period.

It was unclear how the government would respond to the court order. Authorities have registered multiple cases against Mr. Khan since 2022 when he was ousted from power through a vote of no-confidence in the Parliament.

The latest development came a day after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the party of Mr. Khan was improperly denied at least 20 seats in parliament, in a significant blow to the country’s fragile governing coalition.

Mr. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was previously excluded from a system that gives parties extra seats reserved for women and minorities in the National Assembly, or lower house of the Parliament. Though the verdict was a major political win for Mr. Khan, it would not put his party in a position to oust the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came into power following a February 8 election that Mr. Khan allies say was rigged.

Mr. Khan has been embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting violence, since his arrest in May 2023. During nationwide riots that followed that, Mr. Khan’s supporters attacked the military and government buildings in various parts of the country and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest.

The violence subsided only when Mr. Khan was released by the Supreme Court. Mr. Khan was again arrested in early August 2023 after a court handed him a three-year jail sentence for corruption.

Since then, Mr. Khan has been given bail by different courts in all the cases in which he has been convicted.

Islamabad:

A district and sessions court in Islamabad declined the pleas of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, as well as his wife, Bushra Bibi, to suspend their seven-year sentences in the Iddat Case on Thursday, reported Dawn.

The verdict, which had been reserved on Tuesday was notably announced by Additional District and sessions judge (ADSJ) Afzal Majoka today.

Lawyers, women activists, and members of civil society all harshly condemned the Iddat conviction as a “blow to women’s right to dignity and privacy.”

The ruling had been met with protests in Islamabad by activists and criticism in Karachi by demonstrators who were against the “state’s intrusion into people’s private lives.

Prior to the general elections, on February 3, an Islamabad court condemned the couple to seven years in prison and fined them each PKR 500,000 for getting married during Bushra Bibi’s Iddat period.

The couple was given 14 years in prison in the Toshakhana case, while Imran and his foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, were given 10 years in prison in the Cypher case, the same week the verdict was rendered.

Imran and Qureshi were found not guilty in the Cypher case earlier this month, and the penalties in the Toshakhana case were suspended in April.

The case was previously being heard by District and Sessions Judge Shahrukh Arjumand, who had reserved the verdict in May.

On the day of the anticipated announcement, he requested that the matter be transferred, citing Maneka’s plea to be removed from the appeals panel. The case was then moved to ADSJ Majoka.

Nonetheless, Bushra Bibi’s attorney had petitioned the Islamabad High Court for her release on bond and a sentence suspension. In a related development, the sessions court was instructed by the Islamabad High Court to rule on the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder’s and his wife’s pleas within ten days.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)