Lahore High Court Summons Deputy Commissioner Over Imran Khan’s Sisters’ Detention as Noreen Niazi Gets Family Meeting

On Monday, November 2, 2026, a courtroom in Lahore became the latest place where a long-running detention case was tested against the paperwork behind it. The Lahore High Court did not order the release of three women held under preventive detention law, and it did not declare their detention unlawful. What it did was narrower, and in its own way more telling: it called for the officials and the reports that could explain how a 30-day detention became a longer one, and it ordered a practical step for a family that has been asking to see its mother. The three women are Aleema Khan, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, the sisters of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founder Imran Khan. They have been in custody since September, detained under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, in connection with a planned protest march to Islamabad. Their lawyers say the extensions to their detention were unlawful. The Punjab government says the extensions followed the deputy commissioner’s recommendation. Between those two positions sits a set of dates, notifications and medical reports that the court has now asked to see, and a hearing date, November 4, on which at least part of the dispute may become clearer. This is the story of the Lahore High Court Imran Khan sisters detention November 2026 hearing, and what it leaves unresolved.

1. What the Court Ordered on Monday

The hearing on Monday was not a final judgment. It was a directions hearing, the kind in which a judge tells the parties what must be produced before the real argument can be decided. Justice Abher Gul Khan presided, and the orders he gave touched three things: the record of the detention extensions, the health and access of Noreen Niazi, and the personal appearance of the Lahore deputy commissioner. Each of those orders matters for a different reason, and together they show what the court still needs before it can rule on the petitions before it.

1.1 The deputy commissioner summons

The most consequential order was the summons to the Lahore deputy commissioner to appear in person on November 4. The deputy commissioner is central to this case because preventive detention under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance runs through that office: the initial orders and their extensions are tied to recommendations and notifications issued at district level. By calling the officer in person, rather than simply asking for another written reply, the court signalled that it wants to be able to ask direct questions about the sequence of events, including the timing of the extension notification. The petitioners had argued that the original 30-day period had already expired before the extension notification was issued on October 7. The government has told the court that the extension was approved on the deputy commissioner’s recommendation. Those two accounts cannot both describe the same lawful process in the same way, and the November 4 appearance is where the gap between them may be examined. The court also sought reports from the Punjab Home Department, with a report deadline of 2 p.m. reported in the day’s proceedings, and it said it would examine a request for a report in Aleema Khan’s case as well. What the reports contain, and whether they reconcile the dates, is not yet public.

1.2 The family meeting for Noreen Niazi

The second order was immediate and human rather than procedural. The court directed that Noreen Niazi’s two daughters be allowed to meet her in jail at 10 a.m. on Tuesday for one hour. The petitioners’ lawyer was directed to submit a formal application to the Lahore deputy commissioner, who was instructed to arrange the meeting on the basis of that request. This was not a ruling on the detention itself. It was an access order, and it came after days in which the family’s access to Noreen Niazi, and her medical care, had become a separate strand of the petitions. The government lawyer told the court that one of Noreen Niazi’s daughters, Hajra Niazi, had already met her mother on October 29 during her hospital treatment. The new order goes further: a timed, one-hour meeting in jail, arranged through the deputy commissioner, for both daughters. Whether that meeting takes place as ordered, and whether it becomes a regular arrangement rather than a single visit, will be known only after Tuesday.

2. The Three Sisters and Their Detentions

It is easy, in a case that turns on notifications and dates, to lose sight of the three people at its centre. Aleema Khan, Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi are not accused in a criminal trial in this matter. They are held under preventive detention, a different legal creature altogether, and the petitions before the court challenge the detention orders rather than defending a charge. Their identities matter because the case is also, inevitably, about Imran Khan, the former prime minister and PTI founder who remains in prison, and about a protest movement that has repeatedly tried to march on Islamabad to demand his release.

2.1 Aleema, Uzma and Noreen: who they are

Aleema Khan is Imran Khan’s sister and the mother of Shahrez Khan, one of the petitioners in this case. Dr Uzma Khan is another sister, a medical doctor by profession. Noreen Niazi, reported to be 70 years old, is the third sister, and the mother of Sakeena Bibi, the other petitioner, as well as of Hajra Niazi. The petitions were filed by Shahrez Khan, Aleema Khan’s son, and by Sakeena Bibi, Noreen Niazi’s daughter. That family structure explains why the case has two distinct threads: a legal challenge to the detention orders themselves, and a plea about medical treatment and family access for the oldest of the three sisters. It also explains why the court’s orders on Monday addressed both the paperwork and the person, summoning an official while also arranging a daughter’s visit. The sisters were detained in Lahore and taken to Kot Lakhpat jail, according to court reporting, and Noreen Niazi was later moved to hospital when her health deteriorated.

2.2 The September detention dates

The dates are the spine of this case, and they are not in dispute in their broad outline. Aleema Khan was detained on September 20, and Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi were detained the next day, September 21. Each detention was for 30 days under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance. On that arithmetic, the first orders were due to expire on October 19 and 20. The petitioners say the 30-day period lapsed, and that the extension notification came only afterwards, on October 7 in one account of the sequence, or after the period had expired in the petitioners’ broader argument. The Punjab government informed the court in late October that the detention periods had been extended by another 30 days. A government lawyer told the court that the extension was approved on October 7 and later said it had been extended by another 30 days on the deputy commissioner’s recommendation. The hearing on Monday did not resolve which version of the timeline is correct. It asked for the reports that might.

3. How the MPO Works

To understand why the dates matter so much, it helps to understand what the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance actually does. It is a preventive detention law, and it works very differently from an ordinary criminal prosecution. That difference is the reason the petitioners’ argument is framed as it is: not as a denial of a crime, but as a claim that the administrative process itself was not followed.

3.1 Preventive detention, not a criminal charge

Under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960, a person can be detained preventively when the authorities judge that their liberty poses a threat to public order. No criminal charge is required, and no trial follows from the detention order itself. The test is an administrative judgment about public order, not a finding of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. That is why the lawyer for the petitioners, Rana Mudassar Umar, could tell the court that the three sisters had spent 44 days in jail without committing any offence. The point of the remark was not that no offence had been alleged in some other context. It was that preventive detention does not need an offence at all, which makes the procedural safeguards around it — the duration of the order, the authority that extends it, and the timing of the extension — the main protection a detained person has. If those safeguards were not followed, the petitioners argue, the detention cannot stand, even though no trial was ever required.

3.2 The 30-day orders and the extension dispute

The initial orders in this case ran for 30 days. The dispute is about what happened next. The petitioners contend that after the completion of the initial 30-day period, the Lahore deputy commissioner issued a notification extending the detention, and that the extension was therefore unlawful because the original period had already lapsed. They challenged the detention in court after the 30-day period expired last month, and it was only then, according to the sequence reported from the proceedings, that the Punjab government informed the court that the detention periods had been extended for another 30 days. The government, for its part, has said the extension was approved on October 7 on the deputy commissioner’s recommendation. The difference between an extension approved on October 7 and an extension notified after the original period expired may sound technical. In preventive detention law, it is the whole case. A detention order that has expired cannot simply be revived by a later notification, the petitioners argue. The court has not yet accepted or rejected that argument. It has asked for the reports.

4. The Petitions Before Justice Abher Gul Khan

The petitions before the court were filed by family members, not by the detained women themselves, and they ask for several things at once. They challenge the extension of the detention orders, they seek medical treatment for Noreen Niazi, and they seek family access. Justice Abher Gul Khan heard the petitions on Monday, and his orders reflected that mixture: some parts of the case were advanced, some were adjourned, and some were left for the reports to clarify.

4.1 Who filed, and what they asked

The petitions were filed by Shahrez Khan, the son of Aleema Khan, and by Sakeena Bibi, concerning the detention of Aleema Khan, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, as well as Noreen Niazi’s medical treatment. Shahrez Khan filed a petition on October 20 challenging the detention and asking the court to order the women’s release and production before the court. The petitions challenge the extension of the detention notifications and raise concerns about Noreen Niazi’s medical treatment and about whether the family has been granted access to the women. On Friday, before Monday’s hearing, the court had directed Noreen Niazi’s counsel to file a separate application seeking medical treatment and family visits, and it sought clarification on whether the family had formally asked the authorities for those facilities. Monday’s hearing carried that thread forward with the order for Tuesday’s jail meeting. The hearing on the extension of Aleema Khan’s detention was adjourned until next week, while the deputy commissioner was summoned for November 4 over the extensions concerning Noreen Niazi and Uzma Khan. That split timetable is worth noting: not every part of the case moves at the same speed.

4.2 The 44 days argument

The figure that has travelled furthest from Monday’s hearing is 44 days. Rana Mudassar Umar, counsel for the petitioners, told the court that the three sisters had spent 44 days behind bars despite having committed no offence, and he requested that a report in Aleema Khan’s case also be summoned by November 4. Justice Abher Gul Khan responded that the court would examine the matter. The 44 days figure is a lawyer’s argument, not a court finding, and it should be read as such. It counts the time in custody up to the hearing and frames it against the absence of a criminal charge, which, as explained above, is the nature of preventive detention rather than an anomaly within it. But the figure does capture something real about the case: by the time of Monday’s hearing, the women had been in custody well beyond the original 30-day orders, and the legal basis for the additional period was precisely what the court was asking to see documented. The court did not adopt the 44 days argument on Monday. It asked for the reports that would let it test it.

5. Noreen Niazi’s Health

If the detention dates are the legal spine of the case, Noreen Niazi’s health is its most urgent human thread. She is 70 years old, according to court reporting, and her health deteriorated in custody in late October. What followed — a hospital admission, a return to jail, and a dispute about access — has become a case within the case, and it is the part of Monday’s hearing that produced an immediate, dated order.

5.1 Cardiology admission on October 28

Noreen Niazi was shifted from Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology on October 28 after experiencing heart-related discomfort. Her lawyer, Rana Mudassar Umer, said her health had deteriorated in custody, and the court sought a report on her medical condition. The Punjab Institute of Cardiology is Lahore’s specialist cardiac hospital, and an admission there signals that the discomfort was treated as serious enough for specialist assessment. The court also sought reports on whether the family has been granted access to the women, and on Friday it directed counsel to file a separate application seeking medical treatment and family visits. The medical strand of the case therefore has two questions running in parallel: what is Noreen Niazi’s condition, and who has been allowed to see her while she is treated. Neither question had a complete public answer before Monday’s hearing, which is why the court asked for a report on her health as well as on the detention extensions.

5.2 The hospital visit and return to jail

The government lawyer told the court that Noreen Niazi had been treated at a hospital and was transferred back to jail on doctors’ instructions, and that her daughter Hajra Niazi had been allowed to meet her mother on October 29 during her hospital treatment. That account, if complete, would answer part of the access question for the hospital period. It does not answer the jail period, which is why Monday’s order for a one-hour jail meeting on Tuesday, for both daughters, matters. The order was directed to be arranged through the Lahore deputy commissioner, on the basis of an application from the petitioners’ lawyer. The distinction between a hospital visit and a jail meeting may seem small, but in a preventive detention case it is not: access in hospital is governed by medical arrangements, while access in jail is governed by prison rules and by the detention order itself. The court’s order bridges that gap for one hour on Tuesday. Whether it is repeated, and whether Noreen Niazi’s medical reports show a condition that requires further treatment outside jail, remains to be seen.

6. The Protest Backdrop

None of this happened in a vacuum. The detentions took place as the PTI geared up for a protest march to Islamabad, and the timing of the detentions — days before the planned demonstration — is central to how both sides describe the case. The petitioners and the government agree on the broad sequence of the protest plans. They disagree on what that sequence means for the lawfulness of the detentions.

6.1 The planned march to Islamabad

The three sisters were detained in connection with the PTI’s anti-government protest and its planned protest march to Islamabad to demand Imran Khan’s release. Aleema Khan was detained on September 20 in Lahore, and Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi were detained a day later, following a recommendation from the police, according to court reporting. The protest was the context in which the authorities judged that preventive detention was warranted. The petitioners do not, in the proceedings reported so far, dispute that a protest was planned. Their challenge is to the detention orders and their extensions, not to the existence of the protest plans. That distinction matters because it keeps the case focused on procedure: whether the orders were made and extended lawfully, rather than on whether the protest itself should have taken place. It also explains why the case has attracted attention beyond the courtroom: the sisters of a jailed former prime minister, detained ahead of a march demanding his release, present a story that is at once legal and political.

6.2 From September 27 to October 4

The protest that the detentions were connected to was initially planned for September 27 and was subsequently moved to October 4. That shift is part of the reported sequence, and it sits alongside the detention dates in a way that invites questions the court has not yet answered. The sisters were detained on September 20 and 21, a week before the original protest date. Their initial 30-day orders would have run through the rescheduled October 4 date and beyond, to October 19 and 20. The extensions, on the government’s account, then carried the detention further. None of this, on its own, proves that the detentions were unlawful or that they were lawful. It shows why the timing of the extension notification matters so much: if the original orders expired before they were extended, the legal basis for holding the women after October 19 and 20 is in question, whatever the protest calendar showed. If the extensions were properly approved on October 7, as the government says, the position is different. The reports the court has called for are meant to settle that question with documents rather than assertions.

7. What the Government Told the Court

The Punjab government’s position, as reported from the proceedings, rests on two pillars: that the extensions were recommended by the deputy commissioner, and that they were approved through the proper channel. The government has not, in the reporting so far, published the stated ground for either extension, and the reporting does not record a detailed justification for why continued detention was judged necessary for public order. That absence is itself part of the story, and it is part of what the court’s orders are designed to address.

7.1 The October 7 extension notification

A government lawyer told the Lahore High Court that the detention was extended by another 30 days on the recommendation of the deputy commissioner, and that the extension was approved on October 7. In late October, the Punjab government informed the court that the detention periods had been extended for another 30 days. The petitioners’ account differs on the sequence: they say the initial 30-day detention period had expired before the Lahore deputy commissioner issued a notification extending the detention on October 7. These two accounts may describe the same notification from different angles — approval on one date, notification on another — or they may describe genuinely different events. The court papers and the reports now sought should show which. What has not been published, according to the reporting, is the stated ground for either extension, or in some accounts the date on which the reports are due back before the bench. The November 4 hearing, at which the deputy commissioner is to appear in person, is the next opportunity for those details to be put on the record.

7.2 The deputy commissioner’s role

The deputy commissioner of Lahore is the official at the centre of both the extension and the access orders. The extensions are said to have been made on that office’s recommendation, and the November 4 summons requires that officer to appear in person. The Tuesday jail meeting is also to be arranged through the deputy commissioner, on the basis of the petitioners’ lawyer’s application. That dual role — as the source of the detention recommendation and as the arranger of family access — illustrates how much of preventive detention administration runs through district officers rather than through the courts. The court can review the orders, and it can summon the officer, but it cannot itself administer the jail meeting or the medical arrangements. Monday’s orders therefore work in two directions at once: they demand accountability for the past, in the form of reports and a personal appearance, and they demand a practical step for the present, in the form of a timed family meeting. Whether the reports satisfy the court, and whether the meeting takes place as ordered, will shape the next stage of the case more than any statement made outside the courtroom.

8. Questions Still Unanswered

Monday’s hearing answered some immediate questions and left the larger ones open. That is normal for a directions hearing, but it means this story is not finished. The next dates — Tuesday’s meeting and Wednesday’s appearance — will provide the next pieces, and the reports the court has sought may provide more. Until then, several important questions remain unconfirmed, and they should be reported as such rather than filled in with speculation.

8.1 What November 4 could decide

November 4 is now the key date in this case. On that day, the Lahore deputy commissioner is to appear in person, and the court will have before it, if the orders are complied with, the reports from the Punjab Home Department on the detention extensions, on Noreen Niazi’s health, and on family access. The court has also said it will examine the request for a report in Aleema Khan’s case by November 4. What November 4 could decide depends on what those reports contain. If they show a lawful, timely extension, the petitioners’ central argument weakens considerably, though the medical and access questions may still require orders. If they show a gap between expiry and extension, the court will have to decide what follows from that gap: whether the detention orders can be cured, whether the women must be released, or whether some other remedy applies. The hearing on Aleema Khan’s extension, adjourned until next week, means that even November 4 may not end the case. It may simply narrow it.

8.2 What remains unconfirmed

Several matters remain unconfirmed and should not be stated as fact. The final outcome of the petitions — release, continued detention, or some other order — is unconfirmed. The stated ground for either extension, beyond the deputy commissioner’s recommendation, is unconfirmed in the published reporting. The full medical picture for Noreen Niazi, beyond the October 28 cardiology admission and the reported return to jail on doctors’ instructions, is unconfirmed. Whether Tuesday’s one-hour jail meeting takes place as ordered, and whether further meetings follow, is unconfirmed until Tuesday. The November 4 appearance and its outcome are unconfirmed. Any further detention extension beyond the current 30-day extension, and any change in the sisters’ custody status, is unconfirmed. Any statement by the sisters themselves, or by Imran Khan, about Monday’s hearing is unconfirmed in the reporting relied on here. And the broader political consequences of the case — for the PTI’s protest plans, for the government’s use of preventive detention, and for the courts’ review of such orders — remain unconfirmed and will depend on what the court decides in the hearings ahead. What is confirmed is narrower, but it matters: a court has asked to see the paperwork, summoned the officer behind it, and ordered a mother to be allowed to see her daughters.

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