Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan has been taken to a hospital in the country’s capital on supreme court orders after weeks of uproar about his deteriorating health.
A spokesperson for Khan’s party, Zulfikar Bukhari, said: “Imran Khan has been shifted from Adiala jail to International Shifa hospital in Islamabad following the supreme court’s order.”
Bukhari said that as per the court order, family should be allowed to meet Khan.
“The next phase must therefore go beyond Imran Khan’s immediate medical treatment. It must ensure independent medical oversight, access to qualified specialists, respect for family and legal rights, and complete transparency regarding his health.” Bukhari said.
Security was beefed up in Islamabad, and hundreds of security personnel were posted around the hospital before Khan was taken there.
The government had to comply with the order by a three-judge panel of the supreme court that ordered the government to take Khan to the private hospital within 48 hours to be examined by physicians. Initially, the government seemed divided on whether to do so or not.
Khan has been suffering from health issues including poor eyesight, and his family and party have been demanding he has access to specialist medical care for months. The family eventually took the case to the supreme court.
In February, officials at Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, said he was facing severe eye damage and had only 15% eyesight, and was being kept in solitary confinement. He was also being denied basic medical care and meetings with family and lawyers.
For months, Adiala jail has been a protest site, where Khan’s family and dozens of protesters would gather to demand medical care for him and for him to be allowed to meet his sisters.
On Tuesday the judges said that they would involve an eye specialist for Khan’s treatment. The order read: “We are mindful of the constitutional and legal obligation … to safeguard the life, health, dignity and security of the prisoner.”
Khan’s party assured the judges that his supporters would not gather in front of the hospital and would allow treatment to go smoothly. In the early hours of Friday, Asad Qaiser, the former speaker of the national assembly and a close aide of Khan, wrote on X that it had been decided by the party that no worker would gather in front of the hospital after Khan is taken to Shifa.
He wrote “if anyone attempts to gather in front of the hospital and violating the party’s decision, he would have no affiliation with the party.”
Khan was arrested in 2023 and sentenced for three years on corruption charges and disqualified from politics for five years.
Khan, who is facing more than 100 cases, was sentenced for 14 years in 2025 on corruption charges and accused of obtaining lucrative plots of land worth billions of rupees through a corrupt deal with a Pakistani property tycoon when he was the prime minister. Khan and his party denied the charges and said cases were politically motivated.
He was Pakistan’s cricket captain before becoming a politician, and served as the prime minister of Pakistan from 2018 to 2022. He was ousted in a vote of no confidence. Khan had enjoyed good relations with Pakistan’s powerful military before he came to power.
Once he was removed from office in 2022, he blamed the US for his removal initially and then Pakistan’s then army chief Gen Bajwa. Both have denied his accusations. After his brief arrest and release in May 2023, Khan in an interview with the Guardian accused Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir of harbouring a “personal grudge” against him and ordering his arrest and a crackdown on his party.
