Police officers on guard on Thursday at a barricaded road near the Shifa international hospital where Imran Khan was transferred. Photograph: Anjum Naveed/AP
Supreme court ordered transfer of ex-leader whose health is reportedly deteriorating, but he was returned to prison several hours later
Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan was briefly taken to a hospital in the country’s capital on supreme court orders after weeks of uproar about his deteriorating health.
Khan, 73, was transferred to the hospital in the early hours of Friday, but then moved back to Adiala prison in Rawalpindi after a few hours, a spokesperson for his party said on Friday.
Khan’s lawyers say his health has deteriorated in prison and that he has lost significant vision in his right eye. The government has said medical reports disclosed no condition requiring immediate treatment.
Pakistan’s information minister said Khan was returned to prison after a “team of qualified doctors … declared him medically fit.”
In its order on Tuesday, after weeks of uproar about his worsening health, the supreme court told authorities to transfer Khan to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad within 48 hours and allow him access to a medical panel that includes his personal physician.
Security was beefed up in Islamabad, and hundreds of security personnel were posted around the hospital before Khan was taken there.
For months Khan’s party and family has been demanding he has access to specialist medical care.
In February, officials at Khan’s party 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. The family eventually took the case to the supreme court.
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 to three years in jail on corruption charges and disqualified from politics for five years.
Khan, who is facing more than 100 cases, was sentenced to 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.
With Reuters
