Tear gas in Karachi, baton charges in Lahore, a crowd in Peshawar — and by nightfall his party had named the date it will march on Islamabad.
Thousands of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf supporters came out from Karachi to Peshawar on Wednesday to mark three years since Imran Khan was taken from his Lahore home to jail, and by the end of the day the party had handed the government a deadline.
Addressing a rally near the Peshawar motorway, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi said PTI would march on Islamabad on September 27 unless two demands were met: that the cases against Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, be fixed for hearing and decided on merit, and that restrictions on his meetings with lawyers, doctors, relatives and party leaders be lifted. Given justice, he said, Khan could walk out in half an hour.
Elsewhere the day was rougher. Police baton-charged demonstrators in Lahore, Mianwali and Rawalpindi. In Karachi, containers sealed the roads to the press club and officers fired tear gas near Fawara Chowk, detaining PTI’s Sindh general secretary, Masroor Siyal. Journalists covering the Lahore protest were assaulted, the party and press bodies said.
Arrest figures vary sharply. PTI said more than 100 workers were held, including five Punjab lawmakers; agency reports early in the day put the number at about 20. Neither total has been confirmed by police.
Permission had been refused in Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan, which is why Peshawar, capital of the only province PTI governs, became the centrepiece. Rawalpindi’s administration turned down a request for Liaquat Bagh.
What he’s serving, and for how long
Khan, 73, was arrested on August 5, 2023, after a trial court convicted him of corrupt practices over the sale of state gifts and jailed him for three years. The Islamabad High Court suspended that sentence three weeks later. He hasn’t left Adiala jail since.
The convictions holding him now are newer. In January 2025 an accountability court gave him 14 years and a Rs1m fine in the £190 million Al-Qadir Trust case, and Bushra Bibi seven years. The National Accountability Bureau alleges the couple took land and money from a property developer in exchange for allowing Rs50bn repatriated by Britain’s National Crime Agency to settle the tycoon’s fines instead of going to the treasury. Both deny it.
In December, a special judge sitting inside Adiala added 17 years each — 10 for criminal breach of trust, seven under the Prevention of Corruption Act — over a Bulgari jewellery set gifted by the Saudi crown prince in 2021, valued by prosecutors at about Rs80m and bought, they said, for Rs2.9m. On paper, the two live convictions total 31 years.
Other cases have fallen away: the cipher conviction was overturned in June 2024, the iddat conviction weeks later. But Khan remains on trial over the May 2023 riots, including the attack on army headquarters. PTI puts the total number of cases against him at around 300.
Appeals have gone nowhere fast. Nineteen months after the Al-Qadir verdict, the high court still hasn’t ruled; in July it granted the defence a final adjournment and warned it would decide on the existing record.
Health, access, and a government that won’t budge
Khan was diagnosed with a retinal condition in his right eye in January. A court was told in February he had 15 per cent vision in it; the government said his sight had improved, which his sister disputes. Last week the Supreme Court cleared for hearing his petition to be moved to Islamabad’s Shifa International Hospital and treated by doctors of his choice.
Amnesty International said this week that Khan hasn’t seen his family in more than eight months, has had no meaningful access to lawyers since December, and shouldn’t be in solitary confinement. The high court ordered twice-weekly visits; his sisters are routinely turned back at the gate.
The government rejects the framing. Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry told Al Jazeera that Khan’s detention is under continuous judicial oversight, that he has facilities beyond those of ordinary prisoners, and that relief must come through the courts, not a political bargain. “Accountability cannot be negotiated,” he said.
Two UN bodies see it differently. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called the detention arbitrary in 2024; in December the Special Rapporteur on torture said Khan was being held alone for up to 23 hours a day.
