However, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan will have to remain in jail in some other cases.
ISLAMABAD — The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday suspended former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan’s three-year sentence in the Toshakhana (gift repository) case.
However, Khan’s immediate release from prison is in doubt. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Monday night, former interior minister Rana Sanaullah said, “He (Imran) will not come outside (of the jail) — release is not possible, (he) will have to face the prosecution in other cases!”
The much-anticipated Islamabad High Court order was announced on Tuesday by a division bench comprising Chief Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri on the PTI chief’s appeal against his prison term, Dawn reported
“The copy of the judgment will be available shortly … all we are saying now is that [Imran’s] request has been approved,” Justice Farooq said.
PTI chairman’s aide on legal affairs Naeem Haider Panjotha also confirmed the same in a post on X (formerly Twitter): “The CJ has accepted our request, suspended the sentence and said a detailed decision would be provided later.”
On August 5, a trial court in Islamabad convicted the PTI chief in the case filed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) that involved concealing details of state gifts and jailed him for three years. The verdict meant he was disqualified from contesting general elections for five years.
Imran Khan subsequently filed an appeal in the high court against his conviction. He had also approached the Supreme Court against the IHC’s decision to remand the case back to the trial court judge who had convicted him, the Dawn report said.
Last week, however, the SC acknowledged “procedural defects” in the former prime minister’s conviction but had opted to wait for the IHC decision on his plea. The court’s observations had drawn the ire of the Pakistan Bar Council, which said there should be no “interference” in matters pending before the subordinate judiciary.
A day ago, ECP’s counsel Advocate Amjad Pervaiz concluded his arguments and urged the court to issue a notice to the state to make it a respondent in the case. For his part, Imran’s lawyer Latif Khosa had said he had no objections to Pervaiz’s plea but had also expressed that the action was not required by the law.
Ahead of Tuesday’s proceedings, PTI lawyers Babar Awan and Salman Safdar reached the IHC. Speaking to media persons outside court, Awan said their fight was not just for a single case or one judgment.
“You all are in a bigger prison and we want to free all of you,” he said.
Meanwhile, Imran’s legal team filed a fresh petition in the IHC seeking directives to refrain authorities from further “illegal and unjustified arrest” of the former premier in any case filed against him after August 5, when he was convicted in the Toshakhana case.
The plea mentions the cipher case — registered by the Federal Investigation Agency on August 15 — as one of the FIRs under which the PTI chief is seeking protection from arrest. The FIA had last week grilled Imran in the said case, which invokes the Official Secrets Act, for over an hour at the Attock Jail.
Filed through Barrister Salman Safdar, the petition named the state as a respondent and alleged that the cipher case had been filed against Imran “with malafide intentions” and termed it of a “bogus nature”.
The plea stated that the “only remedy available to avoid unjustified, illegal and straightaway arrest” was by invoking Article 10 (safeguards as to arrest and detention) of the Constitution for the “protection of his fundamental rights and safeguards”.
The petition further said that the petitioner would “suffer irreparable loss in case he is arrested for another offence, which he has not committed”.
It further expressed the apprehension that the PTI chief’s “political adversaries and opponents would be able to further their nefarious designs and political ambitions in the absence” of the IHC’s “kind intervention”.
