Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan was moved from jail to a government hospital in Islamabad for eye treatment under tight security, prompting his party and family to raise concerns over what they described as a midnight operation shrouded in secrecy.
The former cricketer-turned-politician was transferred from Adiala Jail, where he has been incarcerated, to Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in the early hours of Tuesday for a scheduled second eye injection, the hospital said in a press statement.
Concerns have been growing over the health of the 74-year-old politician after his lawyer claimed he had lost 85 per cent of vision in his right eye because of delayed treatment while in custody.
The government has said Khan is undergoing treatment and had surgery in late January to remove a blood clot in his right eye. However, his family has objected to his receiving treatment without consultation with his trusted personal doctors, demanding urgent and independent medical care.
In a statement issued early Tuesday, PIMS said Khan was examined by a board of specialists, including a consultant cardiologist who performed an echocardiography and ECG.
“Mr Imran Khan was found to be clinically stable,” the hospital said, adding that a second dose of an intravitreal Anti-VEGF injection was administered by surgeons from PIMS and Al-Shifa Eye Hospital.
“The procedure was performed as day-care surgery. During the course of his stay, he remained vitally stable before, during and after the procedure, and was discharged with instructions for care, follow-up advice, and documentation,” the statement added.
Khan’s foreign press adviser Zulfiqar Bukhari said PIMS had issued a press release confirming he had been taken to the hospital.
“PTI strongly maintains that a perfunctory two-line procedural note cannot conceivably substitute for a comprehensive, independently verified medical report,” he said, adding that everything the hospital had stated was “irrelevant and only conjecture” in the absence of confirmation by Khan’s personal doctors.
“In light of Mr Khan’s custodial status, access should be granted to his personal physician and family. Continued opacity surrounding his medical treatment serves only to intensify public disquiet and further undermine confidence in the integrity of the process,” he added.
Reacting to the development, the PTI’s official X account said: “The situation demands transparency, not secrecy.” The party said such “clandestine actions only give rise to more questions.”
His sister, Aleema Khanum, who has been staging sit-in protests outside the jail for days, said they only found out from news reports that Khan was “taken to PIMS again in the middle of the night, supposedly for his second injection in the eye”, calling the overnight operation “criminal”.
“We do not trust the diagnosis or test reports from government medical facilities. There are already reports coming from PIMS that doctors are being threatened with serious consequences if any information is leaked about Imran Khan,” she said.
She asked why the family was not informed and what authorities were hiding.
“Our family rejects their reports even if they issue these doctored reports to the public. We stand by our demand that Imran Khan be examined and treated at Shifa International in Islamabad by specialists, under the supervision of his personal doctors and in the presence of his family,” she added.
Parliamentary Affairs minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry also addressed concerns surrounding the transfer, saying there had been improvement in Khan’s eyesight.
“It is necessary to clarify that the government took him to PIMS under strict security arrangements while fulfilling all legal and humanitarian requirements,” he said.
Khan would be administered a third dose of the injection exactly 30 days later, on 24 March, he added.
“According to doctors’ instructions, there was an improvement in eyesight after the first procedure, in view of which expert physicians recommended a second procedure,” he said.
Khan, a polarising figure in Pakistan, has been in jail since August 2023, when he was first arrested following his conviction in a corruption case.
Although he was later granted bail in some cases, he has remained incarcerated due to multiple other charges and convictions filed against him since then.
He is also serving a separate sentence for allegedly securing land from a business tycoon in return for facilitating the transfer of £190m recovered by the UK’s National Crime Agency during his time in office.
His alleged situation has prompted a group of 14 cricket stars, including from political rival India, to demand better treatment to Pakistan’s cricketing icon.
