Pakistan news: Ex-PM Imran Khan, wife Bushra Bibi sentenced to 14 years in Toshakhana case

Imran Khan, Bushra Bibi sentenced to 14 years with rigorous punishment in Toshakhana case, reports Pakistan’s Geo News. The verdict, a week before national elections, comes a day after Khan was given a prison sentence of 10 years in a case related to leaking state secrets.

Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, had been on remand throughout the trial. The pair married in 2018, months before Khan was elected prime minister.

It was not immediately clear if Khan’s sentences were to run consecutively or concurrently following a trial held inside the jail where he has been detained for much of the time since his arrest in August.

On 30 January, Khan was convicted in what is popularly known as the cipher case. Pakistan’s state media and a spokesman for PTI confirmed the jail term meted out to Imran Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi in the case related to leaking state documents, popularly called the cipher case.

He is accused of exposing state secrets by waving a confidential document, the cipher, at a public rally on March 27, 2022. The document is believed to be a diplomatic correspondence between the Pakistani ambassador to Washington and the foreign ministry in Islamabad.

A no-confidence motion was passed against the Former captain of Pakistan men’s cricket team in April 2022 and is currently serving a three-year prison sentence in Rawalpindi jail. More than 150 other cases are still pending against him. Other charges against the former prime minister range from contempt of court to terrorism and inciting violence.

Imran Khan alleged that the legal cases against him were a plot to sideline him ahead of the vote. Media reports had earlier stated that jailed Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party could be banned if its founder and former prime minister and other top brass are convicted in the cases relating to the May 9 violent incidents and violation of the Secrets Act in the cipher case