The state has finally put its version on the record – not on a talk show, not through a “sources said” whisper, but in black and white before the Supreme Court. And what that record describes is not a man “buried alive” in Adiala; it describes a former prime minister living inside a private enclosure that ordinary prisoners cannot even imagine. He is housed in a separate seven-cell compound that officials say can accommodate 30-35 inmates, now functioning as his personal space, complete with a long corridor and an attached lawn where he walks, reads, and sits in the sun from morning till evening.
The same official reporting says doctors check on him three times a day, recording vitals and maintaining detailed medical logs, while specialist consultants are called when required. His food is said to be prepared separately, tailored to preference, and provided under provisions categorised as “better class” facilities.
This matters because an entire political strategy has been built on the opposite claim. PTI’s street narrative needs Adiala to look like a dungeon, because a victim story mobilises faster than a legal brief. But the Supreme Court record has punctured the melodrama, and it leaves PTI with a harder task: if the founder is not being starved or broken, then what exactly justifies shutting down a whole province in his name?
Look at what unfolded in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over the last several days. PTI workers blocked major highways and key entry and exit points, cutting the province off from the rest of the country and choking supply lines as Ramazan approaches. Even the KP chief minister publicly distanced the government from the blockade call and apologised to residents for the disruption. That apology, by itself, is a confession of misrule: if your party is on the roads and your government is apologising like a bystander, then who is actually governing?
And the cost was not abstract. There have been severe commodity supply disruptions and shortage fears, while the province remained cut off and carried the human fallout tied to these stoppages. This is the part PTI’s leadership keeps missing, or keeps ignoring: political theatre has real victims, and in KP those victims are usually the same people-patients on the road, labourers stuck without wages for the day, families watching prices climb because transport has been weaponised.
PTI’s street narrative needs Adiala to look like a dungeon, because a victim story mobilises faster than a legal brief.
Now add the other poison running through this moment: internal fracture. The party is no longer speaking in one voice; it is speaking over itself. There are unmistakable cracks within the party. PTI Secretary-General Salman Akram Raja has publicly rejected calls to recognise Barrister Gohar Ali Khan as party chairman, insisting that Imran Khan remains the only legitimate leader of the movement, and dismissing suggestions of parallel authority within the ranks.
Earlier, the decision to replace Ali Amin Gandapur as chief minister was not merely administrative but reflected months of tension between Gandapur and Imran Khan’s inner circle, including his sister Aleema Khan, with sources describing a political feud that eroded discipline and generated friction within the party.
When senior figures publicly second-guess one another – Salman Akram Raja saying one thing, Barrister Gohar offering another version of events, and Aleema Khan drawing different conclusions about strategy and leadership – the optics are clear.
One camp wants escalation, another wants optics management, and a third just wants to avoid being blamed for the next disaster. Reports of tense KP House meetings, anger over public inconvenience, and leadership confusion are not opposition propaganda; they are appearing in mainstream coverage.
This is what happens when leadership is not on the same page.
When senior figures are pointing fingers at one another, when one leader blames another for creating divisions, and another insists there is “no forward bloc” while admitting major changes were ordered by the founder, the message to workers and the public becomes muddled.
In the end, what did we see? Rather than taking responsibility, leaders began a blame game. Exploiting the pains of the public for politics is easy. Here is the core contradiction that the people should not let anyone blur: the state is telling the Supreme Court that Imran Khan is receiving “better class” facilities, yet his party is turning KP into a pressure cooker, then blaming each other when the lid blows off.
A political party that cannot manage its own house cannot be trusted with the street. And a movement that claims moral superiority cannot justify tactics that cause ordinary citizens to be collateral damage. One line from the Supreme Court record should haunt every strategist in this drama: he has open access to light, air, and movement. KP’s citizens do not have that luxury when highways are sealed, supplies are stalled, and ambulances are trapped, even as they are the ones breathing in free air.
The writer is a freelance columnist