Reporting snapshot · 11 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). What the hospital has confirmed is limited to its own account of the night, and no report has yet confirmed that the lawyer meeting the high court directed on Tuesday has been arranged. His sister's application to the Supreme Court was filed on Wednesday morning, and no order has been made on it.
In the small hours of Wednesday, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founder Imran Khan was taken from Adiala jail in Rawalpindi to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, given an injection in his right eye, and brought back again — the sixth time the hospital has treated the condition at the centre of his family’s long-running dispute with the government over his care.
The hospital said in a statement issued on Wednesday, and reported by The Express Tribune, that Khan was brought from Central Jail Adiala to PIMS during the night of 10 and 11 November for a medical check-up and follow-up eye treatment, as advised by his treating ophthalmologist. Geo News reported the same statement and added that jail sources described both the outward and the return journey as having been carried out under tight security arrangements.
The timing is what lifts the episode above a routine medical detail. On Tuesday the Islamabad High Court directed that two of his lawyers be allowed to meet him and Bushra Bibi at Adiala jail, and told the defence to begin arguing their appeals against their convictions in the £190 million Al-Qadir Trust case. KhabarWire’s account of that hearing sets out the directives and the questions left open. Hours after the hospital statement, his sister asked the Supreme Court to take charge of his medical care.
What the hospital confirmed
PIMS said the ophthalmology team administered an intravitreal anti-VEGF injection in his right eye after obtaining informed consent, and that the injection was his sixth. The treatment is for a right central retinal vein occlusion, a condition affecting blood flow through the retina that PIMS diagnosed after he reported reduced vision, the newspaper reported.
The hospital said his vital parameters before the procedure were within normal limits, that he was clinically stable, and that a general physical examination was normal. He remained at PIMS for around 40 to 50 minutes and was discharged at approximately 2:30am, the statement said, with instructions for further care and follow-up.
The earlier injections had followed a regular schedule: the first on 24 January, the second in late February, the third on 23 March, the fourth on 28 April and the fifth on 15 June, The Express Tribune reported. KhabarWire covered the first procedure in January and the second injection in February.
What the statement did not say is as important as what it did. It did not identify who authorised the transfer, did not describe what the check-up found beyond the injection, and did not say whether any medical board was formed or whether a follow-up date was fixed. Those are the questions his family has been pressing for since August.
The meeting the high court ordered
The order Khan’s hospital trip preceded came from a division bench of the Islamabad High Court — Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar and Justice Muhammad Asif — sitting on the appeals against the convictions in the £190 million case. Geo News reported that the bench directed the Islamabad advocate general to arrange a meeting for lawyers Latif Khosa and Salman Safdar with Khan and Bushra Bibi at Adiala jail, on the attorney general’s assurance that arguments in the appeals would begin at the next hearing.
Khosa told the bench he had repeatedly sought a meeting and had not been allowed to attend, and asked for at least an hour with Khan. Safdar said his earlier consultation had produced instructions but was not sufficient, and said that Khan’s eyesight had improved but that his blood pressure remained uncontrolled, warning of a risk of brain haemorrhage, Geo News reported. He asked the court for a medical board, and said jail authorities had told him an operation for Bushra Bibi was scheduled for 15 November, as KhabarWire reported from that hearing. No report has confirmed that any of those arrangements has since been carried out, or when the lawyer meeting will take place.
The application filed on Wednesday morning
The family’s answer to the slow pace of the court process came from Uzma Khan, who has herself been detained under the Maintenance of Public Order at Kot Lakhpat Jail. She moved an application in the Supreme Court seeking an urgent hearing of the case concerning Khan’s transfer from Adiala jail to Shifa International Hospital in compliance with its 18 August order, The Express Tribune reported.
Her application asks the court to depute one of its officers, or appoint a local commission, to oversee the transfer so that it can be carried out for a medical examination, and asks that the main case be fixed for a hearing next week. Citing reports in the media, she said his blood pressure had recently risen to 192 and that his right to health, access to medical advice and access by his family would continue to be prejudiced if an early hearing were not granted. She has already filed a contempt petition against the prime minister and other executive authorities over the alleged failure to implement the 18 August order.
PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan said he learned of the hospital visit from media reports, and repeated the party’s demand that Khan be moved to Shifa as the Supreme Court directed, with a medical board comprising his personal physician and a member of his family. He wrote that the order “has remained unimplemented for nearly three months”, Geo News reported.
The order that is still outstanding
The Supreme Court’s decision of 18 August required Khan to be moved from Adiala jail to Shifa International Hospital within two days for examination and treatment, with a medical board including his personal physician, Dr Faisal Sultan, and his sister, weekly family meetings and twice-weekly telephone calls with his sons, and a confidential medical report, as this outlet reported at the time. Khan was instead taken to PIMS for an examination on the night of 20 and 21 August, and returned to jail before dawn; the Islamabad chief commissioner refiled a review petition seeking to have the order reconsidered, and PTI filed a contempt petition of its own, which this outlet followed.
That is the pattern the new application addresses: a standing order that the party says has not been implemented, and treatment that continues at the government hospital rather than the private one the court named.
Where the cases stand
An accountability court in Islamabad sentenced Khan to 14 years’ imprisonment with a fine of Rs1 million, and Bushra Bibi to seven years and a fine of Rs500,000, in the Al-Qadir Trust case, Geo News reported. Both are also serving 17-year terms handed down on 20 December 2025 in the Toshakhana-II case, over the retention of a Bulgari jewellery set gifted by the Saudi crown prince, The Express Tribune reported. Khan has been in custody since August 2023 and also faces pending trials under the Anti-Terrorism Act over the 9 May 2023 protests.
Several things remain open rather than settled. Whether the lawyer meeting has been arranged and for when; whether the Supreme Court will fix an early hearing or accept Uzma Khan’s proposal to send an officer or commission; what the check-up found beyond the injection; whether a medical board is ever constituted; and what happens to the operation that counsel said was scheduled for Bushra Bibi on 15 November. The Parliament and Courts tracker follows the institutional record of both files.
