Pakistan: Ex-PM Imran’s wife Bushra gets bail, released, in Toshakhana case
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Bushra Bibi, the controversial wife of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi, was released from prison nearly nine months after the couple was sentenced in a case linked to the illegal sale of state gifts, the media reported on Thursday.
While Khan has remained behind bars since August 2023, fighting over 150 court cases, Bushra was released from Adiala jail in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday after being granted bail the previous day by the Islamabad High Court, Naeem Haider Panjutha, a lawyer for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said
Both Bibi and Khan were sentenced to 14 years in jail in January 2024 after being found guilty on multiple charges of retaining and selling state gifts in violation of government rules when he was the PM from 2018 to 2022.
A court ruled that the couple had illegally sold gifts worth more than PKR 140 million (USD 505,000) received during Khan’s premiership from a state treasury known as Toshakhana or treasure house.
The Khans denied the charges and said they were trumped up by the military-supported Shehbaz Sharif government to victimize the 72-year-old former cricket star.
The Sharif-led government claimed it does not interfere in the judicial process.
The standoff has spawned the worst political turmoil in decades in the South Asian nation of 241 million people, fighting economic meltdown and poverty.
However, Khan remains widely popular in Pakistan, and his party-supported independent candidates won the most seats in February’s election to the National Assembly.
The government registered multiple cases against him since April 2022, when he was ousted from power in a no-confidence vote in parliament.
The former PM has been embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting violence, since his initial arrest in May 2023. He was imprisoned in August 2023 in a corruption case.
Bibi, Khan’s third wife, was first arrested in January. She and Khan were acquitted on charges that their marriage was unlawful, but she was quickly arrested again in the state gifts case.
PTI’s current chairman Gohar Ali Khan said after her release, that Bibi was traveling to her Islamabad residence.
