Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan has been barred from holding meetings inside Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail for two weeks.
According to a notification issued by Punjab’s Home Department, all kinds of visits, meetings and interviews have been restricted in Adiala Jail due to a security alert.
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The notification instructed the authorities that barbed wires should be installed outside the jail premises. A fresh security audit of the officials of the special branch of the police, Intelligence Bureau and the jail staff be done within a single day.
No person would be exempted from body search in the jail premises and a clearance operation would be carried out in and around the jail, it added.
Security clearance of government contractors working inside jails was also sought.
‘PTI founder’s life is in danger’
Expressing severe concerns over the abrupt ban on Khan’s meeting in Adiala jail, PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan feared that the former prime minister’s life was in danger.
Addressing a press conference outside the jail, Gohar said that they were barred from meeting the incarcerated PTI founder. He said that the authorities did not inform anybody about the two-week ban on Khan’s meeting.
The authorities gave “terrorism” as a reason for the move, he added.
Gohar demanded immediate meeting and consultations with the incarcerated PTI founder. He also sought the details about Khan’s health.
The development comes as Khan, who was moved to the Adiala jail in September 2023 from Attock jail, is serving an accumulative sentence of 31 years in various cases and has been engaging his lawyers, party leaders and family members during his imprisonment as previously the authorities had allocated Monday and Thursdays for meetings.
The ex-prime minister, along with former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, were handed down a sentence of 10 years each in the cipher case in January for for publishing contents of a secret cable sent by the country’s ambassador in Washington to the government in Islamabad.
This was followed by another 14-year sentence awarded to Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, by an accountability court in the Toshakhana reference for misusing his 2018 to 2022 premiership to buy and sell gifts in state possession that were received during visits abroad and worth more than Rs140 million ($635,000).
The court also handed down a fine of Rs1.57 billion — Rs787 million each — to the couple.
Subsequently, Khan and Bushra were also sentenced to another seven years, along with a Rs500,000 penalty each, in in the “un-Islamic nikah” case for marrying each other before the completion of the 90-day iddat period following the latter’s divorce.
Furthermore, the PTI founder along with his wife were indicted in the the £190 million case during the jail trial that was conducted in the Adiala jail as well.
Khan’s party and associates in recent months have time again demanded his release from “fabricated” cases while raising concerns for the former premier’s safety inside the prison.
Last week, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) claimed to have arrested three terrorists and recovered a map of Adiala Jail, a hand grenade and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) from their possession.
Rawalpindi City Police Officer (CPO) Khalid Hamdani said police recovered automatic weapons and ammunition from the terrorists who hailed from Afghanistan.
Before that in November, police had found a suspicious bag laden with an explosive device near Adiala Road in Gorakhpur, Rawalpindi, just one kilometre away from the facility.
