Bushra Bibi, wife of the former Prime Minister Imran Khan, was released nearly nine months after both were convicted in a case involving the illegal sale of state gifts.
Bibi walked out from Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi on Thursday after the Islamabad High Court granted her bail a day earlier, said Naeem Haider Panjutha, a lawyer for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.
In January, Bibi and Khan received a 14-year sentence for their convictions in various cases of illicitly retaining and selling state gifts by misusing government rules. The court found them guilty of selling gifts worth more than 140 million rupees, approximately $505,000, given to them from the Toshakhana, the state treasury, during Khan’s tenure from 2018 to 2022.
The couple has always denied the charges, saying they are just politically motivated fabrications by the government against Khan due to the various legal cases he has faced since being ousted from his position in 2022. Khan has been at loggerheads with the country’s powerful military chiefs, whom he accuses of propping up the current Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
But the Sharif administration has insisted it doesn’t interfere with the judiciary, and this conflict has put Pakistan – with its population of 241 million – into uncharted political turbulence. Through it all, Khan has remained widely popular; his party won the most seats in general elections in February.
Since the ousting through no-confidence, the authorities have filed more than one case against Khan. Of course, he has been facing over 150 legal battles, besides charges of calling for violence. In August this year, he was jailed over a case of corruption.
Bibi, Khan’s third wife, was first arrested in January and acquitted in July on charges related to the legality of their marriage before being re-arrested a few weeks later in connection with the state gifts case. On her release, PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan said Bibi was en route to her Islamabad residence.
