Khan was pronounced guilty and sentenced to three years in prison by an Islamabad-based trial court on August 5 in a graft case related to concealing details of state gifts. Soon after the verdict, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief was arrested by the police from his residence in Lahore.
The jail administration did not allow his lawyers and party colleagues to meet him for two days. However, on Monday afternoon, Naeem Haider Panjotha, Imran’s spokesperson on legal matters, was allowed to meet him.
Earlier on Monday, Panjotha filed a petition in the Islamabad high court requesting it to declare Imran’s detention in Attock Jail as “illegal”. The petition also requested for “better class/A-class” jail facilities to be provided to the PTI chief. It urged that Imran be allowed to regularly meet his legal team, family members, his personal doctor, Dr Faisal Sultan, and political aides, lists for which were submitted to the court.
Addressing a press conference after his meeting with Imran, which lasted for an hour and 45 minutes, Panjotha said the PTI chief was being kept in a small C-class cell measuring 9 x 11 feet. The cell, according to Khan’s counsel, has an open washroom, without any doors or walls, and rainwater entered it last night. Khan, the lawyer continued, also told him about the difficulties he faced offering prayers because of the small space. “But despite all this, his morale is very high,” Panjotha said. “‘The jail has mosquitoes in the morning and ants in the evening,” Panjotha quoted Imran as saying.
About food, Panjotha said, Khan told him he was being given the usual“daal (lentils)” and“saag (spinach)”, but he had no issue with it.
“Khan asked me to tell the media that he will never accept slavery, even if they kept him in a D-class jail,” Panjotha said, adding that the PTI chief also said that his house was attacked for the third time on Saturday and attempts were made to break down the door of his bedroom.
Imran, according to Panjotha, directed the party’s legal team to take legal action against those who “attacked” Zaman Park and “kidnapped” him.
The petition filed earlier in the day in the HC stated that “it is yet to be ascertained” under which law the PTI chief had been detained at Attock Jail when the arrest warrant issued by the trial court intended for him to be kept at Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi.
The petition said that the former PM had been “confined in a dirty room which has traditionally been reserved for terrorists”.
“Respondents have been treating Imran like a criminal and have lodged him in a small and squeezed barrack” due to “mala fide reasons and under the pressure of the political regime”, it said.
The plea argued that Imran was “entitled to A-class facilities” considering his “social and political status, his education and his being accustomed to a better living style”.
