An Islamabad accountability court on 31 January 2024 sentenced former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi to 14 years in prison each, in connection with the so-called Toshakhana case concerning the sale of state gifts received during Khan’s 2018–2022 premiership.
The court, presided over by Judge Mohammad Bashir, ruled that Khan had failed to declare the sale of items including a set of Graff jewellery, watches and decorative pieces that had been gifted by foreign dignitaries and were technically property of the Pakistani state.
One of four convictions in seven days
The Toshakhana sentence was the third of four convictions handed down to Khan in the week before Pakistan’s 8 February 2024 general election. He had already been convicted of leaking state secrets (the “cipher” case, ten years) and of an un-Islamic marriage (a separate seven-year sentence), and would later be convicted of corruption in a charity-trust case.
Each verdict was issued in expedited proceedings that Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, and a number of international observers, said breached his due-process rights.
Toshakhana, a recurring scandal
The Toshakhana, or “treasure house”, is a state depository where officials are required to declare gifts received from foreign governments. Officials may retain such gifts only after paying a fraction of their assessed value into the public purse. Allegations that Khan had under-declared the value of items and pocketed the difference had circulated since 2022, when the Election Commission of Pakistan first disqualified him on related grounds.
Similar Toshakhana-related allegations have been levelled at other former Pakistani leaders, including Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, though prosecutions of them have not produced comparable sentences.
Election under shadow
The convictions barred Khan from contesting the 2024 vote, and his PTI candidates were forced to stand as independents. They nonetheless won the largest single bloc of seats, a result widely interpreted by analysts as a rebuke to the establishment-backed prosecutions.
An Islamabad High Court bench later overturned the Toshakhana sentence on appeal in mid-2024, citing procedural deficiencies, but Khan remained in custody under other convictions and his eligibility for office remained contested.
