Today is the scheduled visitation day for Imran and Bushra Bibi. The founder’s sisters — Aleema Khanum, Noreen Niazi, and Uzma Khan — reached the Gorakhpur checkpoint, accompanied by Barrister Salman Akram Raja and a large number of party supporters. However, jail administration permitted one person visitation rights. Jail authorities have restored visitation after 29 days.
The Islamabad Capital Territory administration and District Administration Rawalpindi imposed Section 144 across the cities on Monday after PTI announced a protest outside Adiala Jail and the Islamabad High Court for Tuesday (Today).
In a move to show solidarity with ongoing protests, Chief Minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Sohail Afridi had instructed all provincial assembly members to travel to Islamabad immediately. Sources said that the directive was issued after a meeting of the provincial cabinet. “All assembly members must reach Islamabad tonight,” Afridi said, confirming that the lawmakers would be actively participating in a protest planned for tomorrow.
Afridi has told reporters he has exhausted “all constitutional and legal options” in his efforts to secure a meeting. “What path is left for me through which I can meet my leader?” he asked, adding that despite a court order, neither he nor other PTI leaders had been allowed access to the party’s jailed founding chairman.
Afridi also recalled earlier incidents in which the founder’s sisters were stopped on Adiala Road, alleging they had been humiliated. “All of this is being done to break the founder. Bushra Bibi is being targeted,” he said. He claimed that in the past, “those who fled to London” were granted dozens of visitors inside the same facility.
Read: PTI vents fury in Senate over meeting denial with ‘isolated’ Imran
The party has lamented that meeting their jailed leader had become an ordeal, with even legal counsel, family members, and associates denied access to the “isolated” leader for a “two-minute, non-political” meeting about health.
Aleema moves IHC
Aleema Khan filed a contempt of court petition against the Adiala Jail authorities for allegedly defying a binding IHC order that permits meetings with Imran Khan.
The plea came against the backdrop of intensifying tensions outside Adiala Jail, where K-P Chief Minister Sohail Afridi and a group of PTI lawmakers had staged an overnight sit-in after Afridi was denied access to Imran for the eighth consecutive time on Thursday.
Read more: Section 144 imposed in twin cities amid PTI protests outside Adiala jail, IHC
The PTI leadership claims that the refusal to allow meetings has turned into a systematic policy of political punishment, despite clear judicial directions.
The petition names Adiala Jail Superintendent Abdul Ghafoor Anjum, Saddar Beroni Station House Officer Raja Aizaz Azeem, Federal Interior Secretary Capt (retd) Muhammad Khurram Agha, and Punjab Home Department Secretary Noorul Amin as respondents.
Earlier, Aleema Khan and CM Afridi went to the IHC to seek an audience with the court’s top judge.
Speaking to the media outside the court, Afridi claimed they were informed that the chief justice “did not want to meet them”.