Roving Periscope: Imprisoned, ex-Pak PM Imran now “satisfied” with jail facilities!

Virendra Pandit 

New Delhi: Although they are multiple crisis-ridden, many people in Pakistan have never lost their sense of black humor.

For example, when the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 landed on the southern pole of the Moon last week, a Pakistani man told a TV news channel with a straight face that Pakistan need not worry about such stuff. Flabbergasted, the TV reporter asked why. The ‘relaxed’ citizen remarked: “Like the Moon, we have no water, no electricity, no food…why should, then, we go there at all!”

Now, former Prime Minister Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi’s “satisfaction” at Attock District Jail, where he is cooling his heels in a corruption case, has also made bemusing headlines.

Until recently, he was complaining about mosquitoes and other insects making his life hell in prison and urging his lawyers to get him out at any cost. Now he is “contented” with a new toilet, tissue papers, and perfume, among other facilities, the media reported on Monday.

Imran Khan, 70, has been provided with new facilities at the jail and expressed satisfaction over them to a top police official during his visit to the prison in the Punjab Province, it said.

Farooq Nazir, Inspector-General of Police (Prisons), Punjab, on Sunday, visited the former PM, who is serving a three-year jail term after being sentenced in the Toshakhana corruption case earlier this month, and took stock of the facilities provided to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief.

The officer also reviewed the locations of the close-circuit cameras installed in Khan’s barrack to ensure his privacy.

The jail officials said Imran Khan had been provided a bed, pillow, mattress, chair, and air cooler, as per the prison law.  Besides, he has also been provided with a fan, a prayer room, a copy of the Quran with English translation, books, a newspaper, thermos, dates, honey, tissue papers, and perfume, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

The officials said Khan’s new washroom has a Western toilet seat, and a wash basin and is stocked with a bar of soap, an air freshener, towel, and tissue papers.

Five doctors, each of them available for eight hours daily, have been appointed to provide medical facilities to the former PM. Special food is also provided to the PTI chief with the approval of the IG Prisons. The food is served to him by a special team after being examined by a doctor, the report said.

The additional facilities were provided to Khan after his wife and party expressed concerns over his well-being and safety.

The PTI’s Core Committee had claimed that Khan was being denied the right to order food and water from home, and maybe poisoned during his incarceration.

The party also deemed his imprisonment a breach of regulations.

His wife Bushra Bibi. 49, on Friday last urged the Supreme Court to take “serious notice” of her husband’s deteriorating health, saying it posed a “serious danger” to his life. She moved the apex court following her meeting with the cricketer-turned-politician at the prison on August 22.

Earlier, in her letter to the Punjab Home Secretary, she wrote the court had directed the authorities concerned to shift her husband from Attock Jail in Punjab to Adiala Prison in Rawalpindi.

“My husband has been imprisoned in Attock Jail without any justification. According to the law, my husband should be transferred to Adiala Jail,” she said, adding that Khan should be provided B-class facilities in the prison given his social and political status.

Bushra also said Khan “can be poisoned” in Attock Jail.

Khan was arrested from his Lahore residence shortly after an Islamabad trial court found him guilty of “corrupt practices” in the Toshakhana corruption case and has been incarcerated since August 5.

He was sentenced on charges of unlawfully selling state gifts acquired by him and his family during his 2018-2022 tenure as Pakistan’s Prime Minister.

He has also been barred from politics for five years, preventing him from contesting an upcoming election.

Khan, however, denied any wrongdoing.