The Islamabad High Court (IHC) suspended the sentences for Imran Khan and his spouse, Bushra Bibi, in the Toshakhana case. Chief Justice Aamer Farooq of the IHC announced plans to schedule the appeal hearing after the Eid holidays.
Accountability Court Judge Muhammad Bashir had sentenced the couple to 14 years with stringent punishment and disqualified Khan for a decade, imposing a fine of Rs1.57 billion on them in January.
Khan defended, stating his wife’s unrelated involvement and her undue humiliation in the case. Chief Justice Farooq indicated a swift conclusion to the cipher case, noting a delay in the Toshakhana case hearing until after Eid. The court awaits starting the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) arguments in the cipher case without a fixed duration.
Additionally, the couple faced a seven-year sentence each for their allegedly unlawful marriage. Before this, on January 30, Khan and PTI leader Shah Mahmood Qureshi received a 10-year imprisonment sentence in the cipher case. These verdicts arrived shortly before the February 8 general elections.
The Toshakhana reference, filed by NAB on December 19, 2023, accused the former prime minister and his wife of improperly retaining a jewellery set gifted by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. They allegedly bypassed proper assessment procedures, acting together to undervalue the gift’s assessment with the help of private and government appraisers, resulting in an illegal retention based on a significantly reduced payment.
