After Imran Khan’s sons, Kasim and Sulaiman, confided their concerns about their imprisoned father’s health in Pakistan’s notorious Adiala jail, in a Sky Sports interview with Mike Atherton, the Pakistan Cricket Board deliberated on not taking the field during the second Test against England at Lord’s. The PCB, whose head, Mohsin Naqvi, is also Pakistan’s minister of interior affairs, had requested the broadcasters not to air the interview, but the broadcasters went ahead with it, even if slightly delayed. They later lodged a formal complaint with Sky Sports.
In fact, according to English media, Sky Sports contemplated eschewing the interview before they eventually decided to go ahead. According to The Guardian, “aggrieved Pakistan are understood to have also raised the issue with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.” The interview almost entirely centred around the deposed former Prime Minister, the country’s titanic cricketer, his deteriorating health and the alleged ill-treatment at the hands of the current dispensation.
The most serious allegation was their fear for his life. “It’s very, very clear what they’re doing, which is they’re just blatantly trying to kill him in there,” Kasim claimed. “They just want to keep him in there as long as possible and hopefully just silence him,” he added. He had earlier mentioned the assassination attempts when bullets hit his legs in 2022.
It was also the last time they saw him, sentenced to 14 years on primarily two big charges—one regarding the state gifts, and another known as the Al-Qadir Trust case, which relates to the misappropriation of funds and a land deal. Pakistan government repeatedly denied their visa requests, due to “technical failures”. “They just don’t want us to go for one reason or another, maybe out of fear that we’re going to be active and try to support the efforts of getting him out from over there,” Kasim said.
The broader family in Pakistan too have not seen him in the last ten months, Kasim said. “ Until last week, no one’s been able to see him, been allowed to see him for 10 months, despite them going to the jail every week to attempt to see him,” he elaborated. Until the end of 2025, visitors were regularly allowed, before they were abruptly restricted, presumably due to fears that his supporters would mobilise against the regime. It spun rumours that he had died (or was killed), which though turned out to be false.
Their phone calls have been brief, lasting up upto six minutes, where Imran is inquisitive about their well-being. He complained of his health, especially the loss of vision in an eye. “He had an eye issue. I think he’s lost about 80 percent of the vision in one of his eyes. So he told us about that. He told us that he complained about it for months. And it wasn’t it was being ignored, but wasn’t getting proper treatment,” Sulaiman said. Lawyers have said he has lost 85% of vision in his right eye due to extreme living conditions.
The general conditions of the cell aggravated the clot in the eye, he claimed. “You know, it’s a hot cell in the summer with no proper kind of air conditioning and stuff like that. The last time he was able to speak to our aunts and anyone else, he did say that the conditions have severely worsened recently, that he’s been relating it to other political prisoners who have been killed, I guess you would say, or have died in prison. And right now it’s worse than ever,” he said.
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He was moved to a hospital last week for treatment after a supreme court ruling permitted his temporary release, but has since been returned to prison. “They’re completely isolating him for more than 23 hours a day in a cell. So right now it’s really crucial for us that he gets proper treatment. When he was seen by them, he had an eye patch on from the eye situation. He seemed visibly stressed. And that is something that’s very hard for us to imagine because he embodies a kind of calm assured presence every time I have seen him, even in very very tough situations,” Kasim said.
The interview came amidst mounting pressure to release him. Earlier this week, 21 former captains, including Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar and Dilip Vengsarkar, had written to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif about taking steps to improve Khan’s health. “I suppose the basic theme was the way the state has tried to airbrush Imran almost out of existence, which is increasingly difficult to do in a social media age,” Atherton had said on Sky Sports Cricket.
Neither the PCB nor Sky has commented on the issue that could potentially impact the remainder of the series.
