Kasim Khan and Sulaiman Khan sat down with former England captain Mike Atherton for a pre-recorded segment Sky Sports aired during the lunch break of Day 1 of the second Test between England and Pakistan at Lord’s on Thursday.
Their father Imran Khan, who captained Pakistan to their only Cricket World Cup title in 1992, has been held at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi since August 2023. He is 73.
Kasim told Atherton the family believes the Pakistani state is “blatantly trying to kill him in there,” alleging authorities want to “keep him in as long as possible, and silence him.” The brothers said their father is confined to a small cell for more than 23 hours a day and has lost most of the vision in his right eye.
Kasim described a recent visit.
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“When we saw him, he had an eye patch on from the eye situation; he seemed visibly stressed and that is something that is very hard to imagine,” he said.
“Because he embodies a very calm and assured kind of presence. So to hear him stressed, anxious or disturbed is very difficult.”
Pakistan Cricket Board threatens walk-off
The Pakistan Cricket Board lodged a formal complaint with Sky after the interview aired and, according to multiple reports, initially threatened that its players would not take the field after lunch. Sky released an 18-minute version of the interview that reports called heavily critical of the current government.
The board’s specific grounds have not been made public. Sky acknowledged the complaint but declined to comment further, and the England and Wales Cricket Board also declined to comment.
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Court order and medical dispute
The Sky segment landed a week after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered Khan’s transfer from Adiala to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad for a full medical assessment. That 18 August order followed a cardiac board’s 10 August review that recorded fluctuating blood pressure and anxiety it linked to what the court described as restricted contact with his family.
Khan was taken to Shifa around midnight on Thursday 20 August. Hours later he was returned to Adiala after a team of doctors declared him “medically fit,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a statement on X. The team included an ophthalmologist, a cardiologist and a physician, and Khan’s sister Dr Uzma Khan was present during the examination.
Kasim and Sulaiman say they have been shut out from any independent picture of their father’s condition. Speaking to CNN from London on 6 August, they said their father’s “family, doctors [and] lawyers haven’t been allowed to see him for seven months” and that a visa application they filed in January had gone unanswered.
Khan is back at Adiala. The government says he is fit to remain in custody.
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