What happened
Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, 11 June 2026, that former prime minister Imran Khan should be allowed to defend himself in a Rs10 billion defamation suit filed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, setting aside a 2022 order that had closed his right to defence.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice Ayesha A. Malik, and also comprising Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim, decided the review petitions by a majority of two to one. Justice Ibrahim authored the majority judgment, while Justice Kakar dissented. The court recalled its 29 December 2022 order, which had endorsed striking out Imran Khan’s defence, along with the earlier judgments of the Lahore High Court and the trial court.
The majority held that Order XI, Rule 21 of the Civil Procedure Code, the provision used to strike out the defence, was not a routine case-management tool but the “death knell” of a party’s case, and was strictly penal in nature. It said the law did not favour forfeiting a substantive right of defence on a technicality unless a party’s conduct was proved to be contumacious, obstinate and stubbornly defiant.
The judgment noted that the trial court, in orders on 8 and 17 November 2022, had accepted Imran Khan’s inability to respond to interrogatories because of a gunshot injury he sustained in an assassination attempt at a rally on 3 November 2022. Justice Ibrahim observed that a failure to sign an affidavit or consult counsel while hospitalised was a physical impossibility and not a contumacious act.
The court remanded the matter to the trial court with directions to give Imran Khan a reasonable opportunity to file his reply to the interrogatories and to proceed in accordance with the law. Justice Malik, in an additional note, said the shooting and injury justified an adjournment for a reasonable time and that the right to defence could not be struck out without weighing all relevant factors. Justice Kakar, dissenting, described the case as one of delay by the petitioner and said his conduct had been wilfully disobedient.
The suit dates back to 2017, when Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif alleged that Imran Khan had levelled baseless allegations against him and sought Rs10 billion in compensation. The defamation claim concerned an accusation that Shehbaz Sharif had offered Rs10 billion through a common friend to withdraw the Panama Papers case.
The law does not favour the forfeiture of a substantive right of defence on a technicality unless the conduct of the party is proved to be contumacious, obstinate and stubbornly defiant.
Why it matters
The ruling reopens a long-running civil case that had stalled on a procedural penalty and restores Imran Khan’s chance to contest the defamation claim on the merits. It also reinforces the Supreme Court’s position that the right to a fair trial under Article 10A of the Constitution constrains courts from imposing the harshest procedural sanction without weighing less severe alternatives such as costs or timed orders.
The majority judgment criticised the trial court for remaining, in its words, dormant in its disciplinary capacity for years before imposing the most extreme penalty less than a month after the documented shooting. The decision does not resolve the defamation claim itself; it returns the dispute to the trial court for fresh proceedings.
What is still uncertain
The trial court must now set a schedule for Imran Khan’s reply to the interrogatories and for the suit to move forward. Justice Kakar’s dissent means the bench was not unanimous, and it is not yet clear how quickly the remanded proceedings will advance. The defamation suit remains decided only on procedure, not on the substance of the allegations.
Sources & reporting notes
This is a summary of published reporting, not independent reporting. Details are as carried by the cited source, which was reviewed on 2026-06-11. The case outcome described here is procedural; the underlying defamation claim is contested.
- Dawn — "SC sets aside order closing Imran's right to defence in Rs10bn defamation suit by PM Shehbaz"11 June 2026 · The 2-1 ruling, the bench, the majority and dissenting reasoning, and the case history.
