By Irum Saleem
If the PML-N government genuinely wants the PTI to reconsider its planned Sept 27 long march, Tuesday’s denial of a family meeting with Imran Khan was hardly the kind of gesture that could help lower political tensions. Instead of opening a channel for engagement, the authorities appear to have chosen a course that risks further hardening the PTI’s position ahead of its protest call.
The latest episode unfolded at Adiala jail, where Imran’s cousin, Qasim Zaman, reached the prison on Tuesday to meet the incarcerated former prime minister but was not allowed to see him.
According to PTI lawyer Awais Younas Chaudhry, Mr Zaman and other visitors reached the jail at around 2pm and waited until after 4pm, but the meeting did not take place.
The denial assumes greater significance because the Islamabad High Court has already permitted Imran to meet his family, lawyers and other associates twice a week — on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yet, despite the judicial order, access to the PTI founder has repeatedly remained restricted, adding another point of friction between the government and the former ruling party.
Imran has been in prison since 2023 and his meetings with family members have increasingly become a flashpoint between the PTI and authorities.
Normally, it is his sisters — Aleema Khan, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi — who travel to Adiala jail every week in an attempt to meet him. But all three have now been detained under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, ahead of the PTI’s Sept 27 protest.
With the sisters behind bars, the PTI appears to have deliberately sent another family member to the jail to demonstrate that the restrictions were not merely a consequence of the absence of visitors.
Mr Chaudhry, who submits the names of party leaders and lawyers seeking weekly meetings, told Dawn that had no member of Imran’s family reached Adiala, the jail administration could have argued before the IHC that the meeting did not take place simply because nobody had come to see him.
According to him, the PTI had therefore decided that other family members would approach the jail on Tuesday to establish before the court that its orders were not being implemented. The names, however, were kept secret because of fears that the prospective visitors could also be arrested.
The development leaves the government with an awkward political question: if it wants the PTI to step back from confrontation on Sept 27, why not facilitate something as basic as a family meeting with its incarcerated founder?
For the PTI, the issue is no longer simply about access to Imran Khan. It has become a test of whether court-ordered facilities are being respected and whether the government is willing to create even limited space for political de-escalation.
The lawyers nominated for Tuesday’s meeting also faced the same fate.
Mr Chaudhry said he had submitted the names of PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Khan, Niazullah Niazi, Khalid Yousuf Chaudhry, Raja Yasir and Malik Atif Bashir Awan. The lawyers reached Adiala jail and informed the administration of their arrival, but after waiting for hours they too returned without meeting Imran.
The timing could hardly be more politically sensitive.
The PTI has announced its Sept 27 long march at a time when relations between the government and opposition remain deeply strained. The detention of Imran’s sisters has further intensified the confrontation, while the refusal to allow family and lawyers to meet him provides the PTI with another argument that institutional and judicial guarantees are being disregarded.
The government, on the other hand, appears to be viewing the planned protest primarily through the lens of law and order and preventive measures. The detention of PTI workers and leaders under the MPO is part of that approach.
But such measures can also have a political cost.
Rather than reducing the temperature, restrictions on meetings with an imprisoned party leader can reinforce the PTI’s narrative that the government is closing avenues for political engagement.
For a government seeking to prevent a potentially disruptive protest, allowing family members to meet Mr Khan would have been a relatively simple confidence-building measure.
The matter is also not without a judicial backdrop.
On Aug 18, the Supreme Court directed the authorities to facilitate meetings between Imran and his family while ordering his medical examination at Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad. The order came amid continuing concerns and legal disputes over his access to medical care and family members.
The repeated difficulty in arranging meetings therefore raises a broader question about the gap between judicial directions and their implementation at the jail level.
For the PML-N, the immediate challenge is not merely how to manage the PTI’s Sept 27 mobilisation. It is whether it can create enough political space to prevent another confrontation from becoming a larger crisis.
For the PTI, meanwhile, the denial of meetings is likely to be presented as further evidence that the government is unwilling to provide even limited relief to Mr Khan and his family.
At a time when both sides could use gestures to reduce tensions, Tuesday’s events offered the opposite signal.
A meeting between a prisoner and his family may appear a small matter in Pakistan’s larger political crisis. But ahead of Sept 27, it could have been one of the easiest gestures available to the government to demonstrate that dialogue — rather than confrontation — remained possible..
