A court in Pakistan has delivered a major blow to the country's imprisoned former prime minister, Imran Khan, sentencing him and his wife to lengthy prison terms in a high-profile corruption case.
Verdict Adds to Mounting Legal Woes
On Saturday, 20 December 2025, a special court sentenced Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, to 17 years in prison each. The case centred on the alleged under-priced purchase of luxury state gifts, including watches received from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The court imposed heavy fines alongside the prison terms.
This latest conviction compounds the severe legal troubles facing the former cricket star turned politician, who has been behind bars since August 2023. He is already serving a separate 14-year sentence in a land graft case. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar stated that the new 17-year term would begin only after Khan completes his existing 14-year sentence.
Defence Claims and Planned Protests
Khan's legal team immediately denounced the verdict. Family lawyer Rana Mudassar Umer told Reuters the sentence was announced "without hearing the defence". A spokesperson, Zulfi Bukhari, called it a process that "ignores basic principles of justice" and amounts to political persecution.
In response, Khan's political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), announced plans to hold protests across Punjab province on Sunday. The party has also complained that routine family and legal visits to Khan have been blocked recently, a claim authorities deny.
The Details of the Toshakhana Case
The prosecution argued that Khan and his wife violated state gift rules by buying the luxury items from the Toshakhana—a state repository for gifts received by officials—at a fraction of their market value. Minister Tarar said this caused a loss of several million rupees to the national exchequer.
The court's detailed verdict specified two concurrent sentences:
- 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for criminal breach of trust under the penal code.
- A further 7 years under the country's anti-corruption laws.
This is a separate case from an earlier state gifts prosecution that led to Khan's arrest in 2023. Sentences from that case were later suspended on appeal.
Khan's lawyer, Salman Safdar, confirmed that an appeal against this new verdict will be filed at the Islamabad High Court. As legal battles rage on, Imran Khan remains a deeply polarising figure in Pakistani politics, with his party sidelined from power while he fights dozens of cases ranging from corruption to charges of revealing state secrets.
