Lahore High Court Summons Deputy Commissioner Over Imran Khan’s Sisters’ Detention, Orders Family Meeting

The Lahore High Court has summoned the Lahore deputy commissioner to appear in person on 4 November over the extended preventive detention of former prime minister Imran Khan’s three sisters, and ordered that Noreen Niazi be allowed to meet her two daughters in jail on Tuesday morning.

Justice Abher Gul Khan issued the directions on Monday while hearing petitions filed by Shahrez Khan, the son of Aleema Khan, and Sakeena Bibi, the daughter of Noreen Niazi, challenging the continued detention of Aleema Khan, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, and raising concerns about Noreen’s medical treatment, according to The News.

The three women have been held since September under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, in connection with a planned protest by Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), demanding his release from prison. Aleema Khan was detained on 20 September in Lahore and taken to Kot Lakhpat jail, while Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi were detained a day later, on 21 September, each for an initial period of 30 days, according to the Islamabad Post.

During Monday’s proceedings, the court directed the Lahore deputy commissioner to appear before the bench on Wednesday, 4 November, and ordered that Noreen Niazi’s two daughters be allowed to meet their mother in jail at 10am on Tuesday for one hour. The court directed the petitioners’ lawyer to submit an application to the deputy commissioner regarding the meeting and ordered the deputy commissioner to arrange it on the basis of that request, the Islamabad Post reported.

The hearing is the latest courtroom development in a case that has become one of the most closely watched legal disputes in Pakistani politics, because it tests the legality of preventive detention orders issued against members of the family of the country’s most prominent opposition figure, and because it arrives at a moment when the PTI’s provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has itself been suspended under emergency rule.

What the court ordered on Monday

The Lahore High Court’s directions on Monday were procedural rather than final, but they were pointed. According to The News, Justice Abher Gul Khan summoned the Lahore deputy commissioner over the extensions to the detention orders, and directed that Noreen Niazi be allowed to meet her daughters.

The Islamabad Post reported that the court also sought reports on the extensions to the detention orders, on Noreen Niazi’s medical condition, and on whether the family has been allowed access to the women. The inspector general of prisons, Mian Salik Jalal, was among the officials directed to respond, according to the Pakistan Daily, which cited reporting by The Express Tribune.

PakVoices reported that Justice Abher Gul Khan directed the Punjab Home Department to submit its reports by 2pm on Monday as he heard the pleas, while Pakistan Point reported that the Home Secretary submitted a report in compliance with the court’s order during the hearing.

The petitioners’ counsel, Rana Mudassar Umar, told the court that the three sisters had spent 44 days in jail without committing any offence, and requested that a report concerning Aleema Khan’s detention also be summoned by 4 November. Justice Khan responded that the court would examine the matter, according to the Islamabad Post.

Pakistan Point reported that the hearing on the extension of Aleema Khan’s detention was adjourned until next week, while the deputy commissioner was summoned in person on 4 November in connection with the extensions for Noreen Niazi and Uzma Khan.

The petitions ask the court to declare the detention extensions unlawful. The petitioners maintain that the initial 30-day detention period had expired before the Lahore deputy commissioner issued a notification extending the detention on 7 October, and they have requested the court to declare that notification illegal and set it aside, according to the Islamabad Post.

The detention timeline

The three sisters were detained in the run-up to a PTI protest march on Islamabad planned for 27 September to demand Imran Khan’s release. The protest was subsequently moved to 4 October, according to the Islamabad Post.

Aleema Khan was detained on 20 September in Lahore and moved to Kot Lakhpat jail after the district administration ordered her detained for 30 days under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi were detained on 21 September, following a recommendation from the police, and were also moved to Kot Lakhpat jail, according to reporting by The News carried by Zark News.

The first detention orders ran for 30 days and were due to expire on 19 and 20 October. Shahrez Khan filed a petition on 20 October challenging the detention and asking the court to order the women’s release and production before the court, according to Zark News.

In late October, the Punjab government told the Lahore High Court that the detention of the three sisters had been extended by another 30 days on the recommendation of the deputy commissioner. A government lawyer told the court that the extension had been approved on 7 October, according to the Islamabad Post.

That extension was itself the subject of an earlier hearing on 26 October, when the Punjab government informed the court of the extension and the court disposed of Shahrez Khan’s petition after reviewing a report from the home secretary, observing that the deputy commissioner had not been made a party to the case and that the court could not order beyond the scope of the petition.

The new petitions now squarely challenge the 7 October extension notification, arguing that it was issued after the original detention period had already lapsed. The timing question is the heart of the case: under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, each extension is a fresh administrative decision that must be justified on its own terms, and a notification issued after the previous order expired would leave a gap in which the detention had no legal cover.

Noreen Niazi’s health

The medical condition of Noreen Niazi, who is 70, has become a central part of the proceedings. She was shifted from Kot Lakhpat jail to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology in Lahore on 28 October after experiencing heart-related discomfort in custody, according to The News.

Her lawyer, Rana Mudassar Umar, told the court that she had experienced discomfort in her heart while detained at Kot Lakhpat jail, following which she was taken to the hospital, the Islamabad Post reported.

A lawyer representing the Punjab government informed the court on Monday that Noreen had received treatment at the hospital and was subsequently transferred back to jail on doctors’ advice. The government lawyer further submitted that Noreen’s daughter, Hajira Niazi, had already met her mother on 29 October during her hospital treatment, according to the Islamabad Post.

Pakistan Point reported the same sequence: Noreen was treated at the hospital and transferred back to jail on doctors’ instructions, and her daughter was allowed to meet her on 29 October.

The court’s order for a further meeting on Tuesday, at 10am for one hour, therefore addresses a specific complaint raised by the petitioners: that the detained women had not been allowed to meet their family members or lawyers. Rana Mudassar Umar made that complaint in court on Monday, according to PakVoices, which reported that the counsel contended the detentions had been extended unlawfully and that the family had been denied access.

Concerns about Noreen’s health had already surfaced in the Senate on 29 October, when PTI Senator Ali Zafar said she had suffered a heart attack, a claim that was not confirmed by any independent medical report. Rana Sanaullah, a senior government figure, said she had high blood pressure and that her tests were normal, according to Dawn. The conflicting accounts underline why the court has now demanded a formal report on her medical condition rather than relying on statements made in political forums.

The driver’s detention and the timing allegation

PTI Secretary General Salman Akram Raja, who appeared before the court, raised two further points. He alleged that the arrests had taken place before the formal detention notifications were issued — a claim that, if established, would invert the legal sequence, because the order exists to authorise a detention rather than to ratify one already under way. No finding has been made on that allegation, and it is recorded here as an allegation, not as an established fact.

Raja also told the court that Aleema Khan’s driver had been detained, arguing that the driver was a non-political individual and requesting leniency in his case. Justice Khan questioned why a separate petition had not been filed for the driver if his detention was a distinct concern, observing: “You have filed the applications together, so we will seek the reports together as well,” according to the Islamabad Post.

Raja has previously been quoted as saying: “Anyone can be picked up at any time, and courts are unable to deliver justice.” That remark is advocacy rather than evidence, but it captures the political charge that the PTI has levelled against the detentions from the outset: that they are politically motivated and aimed at silencing the most visible campaigners for Imran Khan’s release.

Preventive detention under the MPO

The detentions were ordered under Section 3 of the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, a law that allows the provincial government to detain a person preventively, without charge, where it is satisfied that the person’s detention is necessary to prevent them from acting in a manner prejudicial to public safety or the maintenance of public order.

Preventive detention under the ordinance is not a criminal process. No charge is required, no trial follows from the detention order itself, and the test is an administrative judgement about public order rather than a judicial finding of guilt. The initial order in this case ran for 30 days, and the ordinance allows for extension, but each renewal must be justified afresh.

The law has been used repeatedly in Pakistan’s history, by governments of different political colours, to detain political workers ahead of planned protests. Its defenders argue that it is a necessary tool for maintaining public order in a country that has seen violent street protests. Its critics argue that it is used to detain people for their political affiliations and that the absence of a charge or trial makes it vulnerable to abuse.

The Lahore High Court’s role in this case is narrower than ruling on the politics of the detentions. It is being asked whether the statutory requirements for extending preventive detention were met in each instance — whether the extension notification was issued in time, whether the deputy commissioner’s recommendation was properly made, and whether the detainees were given the access to family and lawyers that the law and prison rules contemplate. Those are questions with documentary answers, and the reports the court has ordered should contain them.

The wider political context

The sisters’ detention cannot be understood in isolation from the wider confrontation between the PTI and the federal government. Imran Khan, 74, has been in prison for more than three years, since August 2023, and remains the PTI’s central figure despite facing more than 100 cases, all of which he denies as politically motivated.

His sisters have been among the most visible campaigners for his release, leading protests and speaking to reporters outside courts and jails. Aleema Khan in particular has been a prominent public voice against her brother’s imprisonment, and her detention ahead of the planned September protest was widely read in political terms, even though the government’s stated reason was the maintenance of public order.

On 31 October, Imran Khan’s son Sulaiman Khan warned on social media that his father’s life was in danger, saying that no one had seen or heard from him since August and that the family feared the authorities were trying to kill him. The government has denied mistreatment and has said Khan is a convicted prisoner serving court sentences, with designated quarters, a gym, outdoor space and a personal cook.

The detention of the sisters also sits alongside the suspension of the PTI’s provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Emergency rule and governor’s rule were imposed in the province on 11 October, removing the party’s provincial government — a move the PTI has challenged in court and describes as a coup in all but name, while the government defends it on security grounds. The Peshawar High Court is due to hear petitions challenging the emergency on 10 November.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif defended the emergency and governor’s rule on 31 October, telling a meeting of his party’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa parliamentary party that the government had no other option but to save the country, the economy, society and the province, and directing his party’s lawmakers from the province to prioritise short-term welfare over long-term projects.

The opposition leader in the National Assembly, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, has also demanded to know the whereabouts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s suspended chief minister, for whom no detention order had been published, according to the Pakistan Daily. The pattern — detentions without published orders, followed by court proceedings in which the government is asked to produce the paperwork — is one that the Lahore High Court is now examining in the sisters’ case as well.

A separate plea to meet Imran Khan

In a related development, the Islamabad High Court on Monday fixed 5 November for hearing a petition filed by members of a National Dialogue Committee seeking permission to meet Imran Khan at Adiala Jail, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan.

Justice Umair Majid Malik will hear the petition, along with objections raised by the Registrar’s Office, on Thursday. The petition was filed through senior lawyer Faisal Fareed Chaudhry on behalf of former federal minister Fawad Chaudhry, former Sindh governor Imran Ismail, Mahmood Maulvi and Barrister Saif.

The petitioners said they had approached the court in the interest of political stability, constitutional supremacy and national reconciliation. They contended that restrictions on meetings violated Articles 9 and 14 of the Constitution, the relevant prison laws and the United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules, and they invoked the Pakistan Prison Rules, 1978, in seeking permission for meetings and interviews with Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi at the prison.

The two court proceedings — the Lahore High Court’s examination of the sisters’ detention and the Islamabad High Court’s hearing on access to Imran Khan himself — are legally distinct, but they converge on the same underlying question: what access the family and political associates of a jailed former prime minister are entitled to, and what limits the state may lawfully place on that access.

Analysis: Why It Matters

The court is testing the paperwork, not the politics

The most important thing about Monday’s hearing is what the Lahore High Court did not do. It did not order the sisters’ release, it did not declare the extension notification illegal, and it did not accept the PTI’s argument that the detentions are politically motivated. What it did was demand the documents: the reports on the extensions, the medical record, and the account of family access.

That restraint is significant. Preventive detention cases are often fought in the language of grand principle — liberty against security, opposition against the state — but they are usually decided on narrow administrative grounds. The petitioners’ strongest argument is not that the government dislikes the PTI, which is a political claim that a court cannot easily adjudicate, but that the 7 October extension notification was issued after the original 30-day period had expired. If that chronology is established, the detention would have lacked legal cover for a period, and the extension would be vulnerable regardless of the government’s motives.

By summoning the deputy commissioner in person, the court has put the official who issued the notification in the position of having to explain it. That is a more demanding step than simply asking the government’s lawyer to file a report, and it suggests that the bench wants answers that a written submission might not provide.

The timing question is the whole case

The dispute over dates deserves close attention, because it is the one issue on which the court can rule without entering political territory. The initial detention orders were for 30 days. Aleema Khan was detained on 20 September, so her order would have expired on 19 October; her sisters were detained on 21 September, so theirs would have expired on 20 October. The extension notification was issued on 7 October, according to the government’s own account — which, on its face, would be within the original period, not after it.

The petitioners’ argument, as reported, is that the initial 30-day period had expired before the deputy commissioner issued the extension notification on 7 October. That claim, as stated, is difficult to reconcile with the dates unless the petitioners are referring to a different sequence — for example, that an earlier extension was itself defective, or that the notification was backdated, or that the operative order had a different expiry date. The court’s demand for the reports, and its summons to the deputy commissioner, should clarify which version of the chronology is correct.

This is why the case matters beyond the three women concerned. If the court finds that the paperwork does not add up, it will establish that preventive detention orders must be issued strictly within their own time limits, and that a government cannot cure a lapsed order by issuing a notification after the fact. If, on the other hand, the documents show that the extension was properly made, the petitioners will have to fall back on the broader argument that the detentions are politically motivated — a much harder case to win in court.

Family access is becoming a legal issue in its own right

The court’s order for a one-hour meeting between Noreen Niazi and her daughters on Tuesday may look like a minor procedural direction, but it reflects a growing legal theme in the cases surrounding Imran Khan’s imprisonment: access.

The family has repeatedly complained that it is denied meetings with Imran Khan himself, and the Islamabad High Court is now being asked to rule on a petition seeking access to him at Adiala Jail. In the sisters’ case, the complaint is that the detained women were not allowed to meet their families or lawyers. The court has responded by ordering a specific meeting at a specific time, rather than by issuing a general direction.

That specificity matters. A general direction can be complied with slowly or partially; a direction that two named people be allowed to meet their mother at 10am on Tuesday for one hour is either complied with or it is not. The court has chosen a remedy that is easy to verify, and the fact that it did so suggests that the bench was not satisfied with the government’s account of the access already given.

Health in custody is now a matter of public record

Noreen Niazi’s transfer to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology on 28 October has made her health a matter of public record, and the court’s demand for a medical report means that the state will have to put its account of her condition in writing.

The conflicting accounts given in the Senate on 29 October — a heart attack, according to one senator; high blood pressure with normal tests, according to a government figure — show why a written medical report matters. Neither claim was supported by a published medical document, and the court is now in a position to obtain one.

The age of the detainee adds to the sensitivity. At 70, Noreen Niazi is the oldest of the three sisters, and her hospitalisation has become the most human element of a case that is otherwise argued in the language of statutes and notifications. Whatever the court decides about the legality of the detention, the medical report will shape public judgement about how the detention was carried out.

The case sits inside a wider pattern of detention without published orders

The sisters’ case is not the only instance in which the courts have been asked to examine detentions for which no order was initially published. The opposition leader in the National Assembly has demanded to know the whereabouts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s suspended chief minister, for whom no detention order had been published. The driver of Aleema Khan was detained without, so far as has been reported, a separate order of his own.

Taken together, these cases suggest a pattern in which detentions are carried out first and the paperwork is produced later, in response to a court order. If that is what happened in the sisters’ case, the Lahore High Court’s insistence on seeing the documents is the appropriate judicial response. If the paperwork turns out to be in order, the government will have an opportunity to demonstrate that the process was followed.

Either way, the case illustrates a broader truth about the current moment in Pakistani politics: the courts have become the only forum in which questions about detention are being asked and answered, and the answers depend on documents rather than on press conferences.

What to Watch Next

1. Wednesday, 4 November: The Lahore deputy commissioner is due to appear in person before Justice Abher Gul Khan. Watch for whether the court accepts the government’s account of the 7 October extension or finds a gap in the detention’s legal cover.
2. Tuesday, 10am: Noreen Niazi’s two daughters are due to meet her in jail for one hour. Watch for whether the meeting takes place as ordered, and whether the family reports any further restrictions on access.
3. The medical report: The court has sought a formal report on Noreen Niazi’s health. Watch for whether it is produced, and whether it resolves the conflicting accounts given in the Senate about her condition.
4. Aleema Khan’s hearing next week: The hearing on the extension of Aleema Khan’s detention has been adjourned until next week. Watch for whether the court treats her case separately from her sisters’, and whether it orders her release or upholds the extension.
5. Thursday, 5 November: The Islamabad High Court hears the National Dialogue Committee’s petition seeking permission to meet Imran Khan at Adiala Jail. Watch for whether the court grants access, and what it says about the constitutional and prison-rule arguments raised by the petitioners.

Sources

• The News — LHC summons Lahore DC over Imran’s sisters detention on Nov 4
• Islamabad Post — LHC summons Lahore DC over Imran’s sisters detention, orders Noreen’s meeting with daughters
• Abb Takk News — LHC summons Lahore DC over detention of Imran Khan’s sisters, orders family meeting
• Pakistan Point — Lahore High Court Orders Jail Meeting Between Noreen Niazi And Her Two Daughters
• Associated Press of Pakistan via TezKhabar — IHC fixes November 5 hearing on plea seeking jail meeting with PTI founder