LONDON: One of Imran Khan’s sons alleged on Wednesday that the government of Pakistan was “deliberately refusing” to process visas for him and his brother, preventing them from travelling to Pakistan to see their incarcerated father as concerns about his health grow.

In a statement posted on the social media platform X, Kasim Khan said he and his brother, Sulaiman, had been trying to travel to Pakistan to visit their father, who has been in custody since August 2023.

“For 914 days, he has been held in solitary confinement while his health deteriorates and he is denied access to independent medical care.”

Mr Kasim alleged that authorities were now “deliberately refusing to process our visas”, describing the denial of medical treatment to a prisoner as “cruel” and preventing his children from seeing him as “collective punishment”.

“I call on international human rights organisations and governments to speak out and act before irreversible harm is done,” the statement added.

PTI founder Imran Khan has been held at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi following his conviction in a number of cases after his removal from office in April 2022. His sons, Mr Kasim and Mr Sulaiman, have repeatedly said over the past year that they have been unable to meet their father since his arrest.

In December, they told Sky News that they planned to visit their father in January. At the time, Mr Kasim had said: “We are now planning to [visit] because they said it openly. So — unless they go against their word — we should be going in January. We have applied for our visas […] It hasn’t come through yet. We are expecting it to come through, so we are planning a trip in January.”

Government representatives, meanwhile, have previously denied any official hindrance to their proposed visit.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2026