The counsel for former prime minister Imran Khan, Naeem Haider, has claimed that the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) chief is being kept in “distressing conditions” in Attock jail and provided C-Class facilities.

According to him, the PTI chief is being kept in a dark, small, C-Class, manual labour room and there is an open washroom there, which does not have a shower. However, the government has claimed that Imran Khan has been given B-Class facilities.

Be that as it may, a hue and cry raised by the counsel for Imran Khan over the purported lack of facilities in jail is not more than a crude attempt aimed at garnering sympathies for a jailed politician in a somewhat crude manner. Little do, however, the counsel for Imran Khan and his party strategists appreciate the fact that jail time in South Asian politics is a badge of honour.

His counsel must have lost sight of the fact that prison is not necessarily the end of the political road in South Asia in particular. For example, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, went to jail as many as nine times; he spent almost nine years in different prisons of undivided India.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, also from Indian National Congress, spent as many as 10 years in jail during the colonial rule. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Samad Khan Achakzai, Bacha Khan, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, Ataullah Mengal, Wali Khan, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, Nawaz Sharif and many others faced incarceration in the history of Pakistan.

My question is why is there unnecessary hullabaloo over Imran Khan’s arrest and his incarceration? Let him undergo the rigours of jail. Needless to say, Imran Khan happens to be the most popular leader after Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the entire history of the country.

Ahmed Shah Bukhari (Lahore)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023