LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — The PTI chairman, Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, visited the party’s vice chairman, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology in Lahore on Thursday, where the former foreign minister is being treated after collapsing in Kot Lakhpat jail.
Gohar was accompanied by Qureshi’s son, Zain Qureshi, a member of the National Assembly. Neither the party nor the hospital gave details of Qureshi’s condition after the visit.
Qureshi was moved from the jail to the hospital on Tuesday. His lawyer, Rana Mudassar Umar, said he had fainted and fallen a few days earlier. Party sources said he became dizzy and collapsed while walking inside his barracks, injuring his knee and arm.
Doctors first kept him under observation for 24 hours and then decided to admit him for further tests and treatment, his lawyer said. Jail authorities took blood samples and sent them to Shaukat Khanum Hospital for testing, and the results have not yet been shared, according to the party.
Zain Qureshi said last week that his father had told him during a jail meeting that he suddenly fainted while walking in the barracks compound. He asked the prison authorities to arrange a CT scan and to take him to a dentist for a cracked tooth.
The PTI’s core committee raised concern about his fall at a meeting on November 6 and called on the courts, the government, and the prison administration to make sure he was moved to hospital, fully examined, and treated. Umar said an application had been filed with the anti-terrorism court, but court holidays had delayed it.
It is not Qureshi’s first hospital stay in custody. He was taken to the same hospital in May 2025 after complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath, and he had his gallbladder removed at the Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute in December 2025.
Qureshi has been in custody since August 2023 and faces several cases linked to the riots of May 9, 2023. In July 2024, an anti-terrorism court in Lahore indicted him in a case over an alleged attack on, and arson at, the Shadman police station. His daughter, Meher Bano, has called for his release and says the charges against him are false.
The visit came on the day two of Imran Khan’s sisters, Noreen Niazi and Uzma Khan, were released from Kot Lakhpat jail after more than seven weeks in detention. The PTI founder was taken from Adiala jail to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad overnight on November 10 for eye treatment, the hospital said.
