Former Pakistani PM Imran Khan denied medical care in prison – sister

The authorities have also not allowed family members to meet him despite a serious eye condition, Naureen Niazi has told RT

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been denied medical care in prison, his sister has alleged.

Khan has been in prison since August 2023, when he was convicted in a case for profiting from the sale of state gifts.

The authorities have denied permission to family members or doctors to meet him recently, his sister Naureen Niazi told RT in an interview.

“We don’t really know his real condition because they don’t let our doctors see him. So we can’t trust what they are saying,” she said, adding the family or their doctors haven’t met Khan in the last three months.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered a medical team to examine Khan and allowed phone contact with his sons after a court-appointed lawyer’s report.

Khan has been left with just 15% vision in his right eye after authorities allegedly ignored his complaints for months, lawyer Salman Safdar wrote in a report to the court. “No action was taken by the jail authorities to address these complaints,” the report said.

“For the last three months he has been telling the superintendent [in] jail that my eyes are hurting,” Niazi said in the interview.

Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were also convicted in a $232 million land corruption case in January 2025 and sentenced to a 14-year prison term. 

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Khan has denied the charges, calling them “politically motivated.”

The former cricket star, who served as prime minister from 2018 to 2022, alleges he was overthrown as a result of a US conspiracy. Khan was toppled in April 2022 by the first no-confidence vote in the country’s history, reportedly at the request of the US, because he was too friendly to Russia.

In the 2023 case, he was found guilty of illegally buying and selling state gifts, although the sentence was later suspended. In 2024, he was also sentenced to ten years for leaking state secrets, a charge he has denied.

His arrests and sentences sparked nationwide protests, some of which turned violent.