Imran Khan Family Says Health Access Denied as Sisters Held
The Only Medical Record Is a Phone Call
A phone is a rectangle of glass and metal, and most days it is furniture. In one household in London it is the only medical record the family has. Sulaiman Khan and Kasim Khan, the London-based sons of Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, say they have received little to no information about their father’s health. Their last telephone conversation with him took place in March 2026, according to the family. On that call, the 73-year-old said he had lost 85 percent of the vision in his right eye. He told them that despite his complaints the problem had gone untreated for months. That single conversation is the most detailed medical account the family says it possesses.
Behind the voice sits a place. The sons say their father is being held in a tiny cell. They say he has been allowed outside for only one or two hours a day. For 10 months, they say, he was kept in isolation from family, lawyers and a personal physician. Only after that stretch was he briefly allowed to see two of his sisters. The family’s argument is therefore not only legal but also about verification: without access, no doctor the family trusts can confirm what it has been told. A 73-year-old with untreated loss of vision, held in a small space with limited time outdoors, is a case that cannot be independently examined.
The sons have made specific requests. They have urged the authorities to allow their father access to a personal physician. They want regular family access and telephone calls restored. They have asked that the Supreme Court’s orders be obeyed immediately. In practical terms, they want Khan moved to Shifa International Hospital. There, they say, independent doctors could assess him. The demand concerns access and examination, not the outcome of the cases against him.
Detentions Before the March
The opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, has planned a protest march for September 27, 2026, according to the party. The march is intended to pressure the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to release Khan. The party says the protest will call for respect for constitutional and political rights. Khan was removed from office in 2022 by a parliamentary no-confidence vote, the mechanism by which a majority of lawmakers can remove a sitting prime minister. He was jailed in 2023 on corruption charges. He has said those charges are politically motivated. His party says it has faced a sustained government crackdown.
The state moved against the family first. Khan’s three sisters were detained in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, on Monday, according to the family and party. The detention orders cited concerns that the sisters were a threat to public safety and to the maintenance of public order. All three were ordered held for 30 days under a public order ordinance, a provincial law that allows authorities to detain a person for a set period without a normal criminal charge if they are deemed a threat to public order. Khan’s sons said the detentions were intended to intimidate their family and their supporters before the planned rally. “Our family members who have been arbitrarily taken into custody must be released immediately,” they said. [1] They added: “The abductions of our family members in the middle of the night, with no reason given, were purely to intimidate them.”
Pakistan’s government has rejected the family’s claims and says its priority is to maintain public order during the planned protest, according to Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry. Authorities have stepped up security preparations in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, deploying thousands of police personnel. Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry has warned that the government will not tolerate unlawful activity or actions threatening lives and property. “If you are a peaceful citizen, come to Islamabad from any route, come 100 times,” he said. [1] “But if you come as terrorists, we will not let you leave.” He also said: “The right to protest does not give the right to attack.”
That language rests on a recent record. In 2024, pro-Khan protests in Islamabad turned violent. Demonstrators breached high-security zones, and clashes with security forces left six dead. When Khan was arrested in May 2023, nationwide PTI rallies also turned violent. Military and government buildings suffered damage, several people were killed and hundreds were injured. Both sides approach the date with the recent past in mind.
A Base That Gets Louder When Silenced
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the detentions would likely further energize Khan’s supporters. “The arrests will galvanize what is already an angry and anxious Khan support base,” he said. [1] He called Khan’s sisters prominent advocates of his cause. Their detention, he said, has placed the family at the center of the confrontation between the government and the PTI. Khan’s base, he noted, is worried about the state of his health. Detaining a sister, he added, increases the chance that protesters take to the streets on the 27th.
Zulfi Bukhari, a senior PTI leader and a close aide to Khan, said the detentions were meant to create fear but would not stop the party from mobilizing supporters across the country. “What they don’t realize is all they are doing is creating more hatred for themselves among the public,” he said. He described the current crackdown as the most severe the PTI has faced. “This crackdown seems the more brutal,” he said, adding that the government was acting out of frustration. “They are fueling a fire that will soon be out of their control,” he said. “They can keep attacking us, and we will continue to resist. This protest will go on, and many more after it.”
The confrontation sits inside a wider frame. Khan remains a popular political figure. From his cell he remains at the center of the standoff between his party and the country’s powerful military. The government, meanwhile, is managing several other problems at once: economic malaise, conflict with the Afghan Taliban, and the fallout from the June 2025 Israel-Iran war. Further domestic unrest, in that setting, is an unwelcome complication for a government already stretched.
In the Islamabad-Rawalpindi area this week, shipping containers and other barriers sit at key entry points, holding nothing, doing the work of a wall. Police stand behind them. In a London apartment, a phone waits for a call. One object was built to move goods; the other to receive a voice. Both, for now, are being used to hold a line.
Sources
1. Usnews — Quote source (original article)
Mentioned organisations (context, not sources)
- Supreme Court — Organisation (homepage)
- Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — Organisation (homepage)