Tahir Maqsood Chheena
There are moments in the life of a nation when its true character stands exposed. The controversy surrounding the medical care of incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan is one such moment. It reveals, with brutal clarity, how deeply politics has penetrated even the most basic human right: the right to receive medical treatment with dignity.
The interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, took to the podium on Tuesday and pointed his finger squarely at Imran Khan’s sister, Aleema Khan. His charge was serious. He alleged that she had deliberately delayed her brother’s medical checkup by three days, not out of genuine concern for his welfare, but to keep the issue of his deteriorating health alive as a political weapon. “Almost all political leaders were on board, but Aleema Khan sahiba vetoed them,” Naqvi declared, suggesting that her insistence on specific conditions for the checkup and treatment was nothing more than a calculated move to extract political mileage from a man’s suffering.
The opposition alliance TTAP was swift and sharp in its rebuttal, dismissing the minister’s statement as “blatantly misleading and contrary to the facts.” Yet what complicated the picture further was that certain PTI leaders, through their own remarks about Naqvi’s role and their dealings with the government, appeared to partially validate what the minister had said. This partial endorsement from within the party’s own ranks is telling. It suggests that the PTI camp is not a unified front on this matter, and that there are real, unresolved disagreements about how to handle their leader’s condition and who should be trusted to oversee it.
Aleema Khan and her sister then held their own press conference, presenting a version of events that contradicted the government’s narrative at almost every point. They insisted their brother was “not fine.” They described how, nearly three months ago, Imran Khan had flagged a problem with his eyesight to jail authorities and was not given timely treatment. They further alleged that the government had broken its own promises: a transfer to a private hospital had been assured but not delivered, and the family’s nominated doctors had been denied access. In their account, it is not the family that has been playing politics. It is the government that has been making promises it never intended to keep.
The truth, as it so often is in Pakistan’s political theatre, is difficult to isolate. Both sides are speaking, but neither is speaking with full transparency. What is clear, however, is that there are serious fractures within the PTI itself on this question. Some leaders appear willing to take the government at its word regarding Imran Khan’s medical condition and its handling. Others, particularly those closest to him by blood, insist that no such trust is warranted without independent verification and personal oversight.
This internal division is not merely a political inconvenience. It has real consequences for a man sitting in a prison cell, dependent on those outside to secure proper care for him. When those outside cannot agree on a common course of action, the man inside suffers the consequences. And no political calculation, from any quarter, justifies that outcome.
That said, the government’s hands are far from clean in this affair. Its initial response to questions about Imran Khan’s health was denial. Officials insisted nothing was wrong. The truth only emerged because someone leaked information about his visit to Pims hospital in Islamabad to the press. Had that leak not occurred, the public might never have known. This is not the behaviour of an administration confident in its own transparency. It is the behaviour of an institution that was concealing something and got caught.
Having been caught in that concealment, the government cannot now credibly turn around and demand that the family simply trust its management of the situation. Trust must be earned. It is earned through honesty and consistency, and the government demonstrated neither in the early stages of this episode. It created the conditions for doubt. It should not be surprised that doubt is exactly what it has received in return.
The family’s demand for their own doctors, for a transfer to a private hospital, for direct access to their brother and son: these are not unreasonable demands. They are the instinctive responses of people who were told nothing was wrong, then discovered something was wrong, and who have every rational basis to believe that without their own oversight, they will not receive the truth.
At the same time, the PTI and Imran Khan’s family must arrive at a clear and unified position. The current state of internal disagreement serves no one, least of all Imran Khan himself. If different factions within the party are sending contradictory signals to the government, the government will exploit that ambiguity to delay, deflect, and deny. Unity of purpose is not merely a political virtue here. It is a practical necessity for securing basic care for their leader.
There is a principle at stake that rises above the partisan noise surrounding this entire episode. No person, regardless of the charges against them, regardless of the court of political opinion, should have their access to medical care used as a tool of pressure or a subject of political bargaining. A prison is meant to deprive a person of liberty. It is not meant to deprive them of health, dignity, or the right to be seen by doctors they trust.
Pakistan has a long and painful history of allowing political enmity to override basic decency. The Imran Khan medical controversy is the latest chapter in that history. Both the government and the opposition must step back from the posturing and ask themselves a simple question: what does this episode look like to the world watching from outside? The answer, unfortunately, is not flattering to anyone involved.
No man’s health should become a hostage to political bickering. That is not governance. That is cruelty dressed in the language of administration.
