Imran Khan’s Reported Blood Pressure Reading of 192 Sparks PTI Demand for Shifa Hospital Transfer as Accounts of His Health Differ

Introduction

Pakistan’s politics returned to the health of its most famous prisoner on Thursday, November 5, 2026, when the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf said former prime minister Imran Khan’s blood pressure had reached 192 inside Adiala jail and demanded his immediate transfer to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad. The claim, made by the party’s secretary general Salman Akram Raja, came two days after Khan met his lawyer at the Rawalpindi prison for the first time since April, and it immediately divided the accounts of what happened in that meeting. The lawyer at the centre of it, Salman Safdar, said he was not the source of the alarming reports, while other people familiar with the meeting described Khan as generally fit even as they recalled a reading near 190. No independent medical report has been published with the claim, and the government has not released its own medical account, so the figure of 192 remains a claim by the party and the family rather than a confirmed medical finding. The dispute has now moved into the courts, with the Islamabad High Court due to hear a petition about access to Khan on the same day, and into the opposition’s wider campaign, where Khan’s health has become part of a planned all-parties conference. The sections below set out what was claimed, who disputes it, and what happens next in the case built around Imran Khan blood pressure 192 PTI Shifa transfer November 2026.

1. What PTI says happened at Adiala

1.1 The 192 reading and who reported it

PTI Secretary General Salman Akram Raja said Khan’s blood pressure had escalated to 192, a level the party described as alarming and a cause for serious concern about his health. The claim was shared publicly by the party and by Khan’s sister Rubina Khan, who reported the reading in a statement on November 3, 2026, and it was then repeated in Pakistani reporting on November 5. Raja presented the figure as the reason the party was demanding urgent action, arguing that a reading at that level could not be left to routine prison care and needed the attention of Khan’s own doctors. The party framed the episode not as a routine health update but as a warning, and it linked the reported reading directly to its demand for a hospital transfer rather than to any request for a check-up inside the jail.

1.2 The November 2 meeting with Salman Safdar

The party says the reported reading followed a meeting on November 2 at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi between Khan and his lawyer, Salman Safdar. According to PTI Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, it was the first such lawyer meeting since April, which made the meeting itself a notable event before any health claim was attached to it. The long gap between meetings is part of why the party and the family have complained about restricted access, and it is also why so much attention fell on what was said and observed in that single sitting. The reading of 192 was, on the party’s account, mentioned in the course of that meeting, and the party says the figure came from Khan himself. That detail matters, because the later dispute over the claim turns on who said what in a meeting that only a small number of people attended.

2. The demand for a Shifa transfer

2.1 What PTI is asking for

PTI has demanded Khan’s immediate transfer to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad for treatment by his personal doctors. The demand is specific: not a transfer to any hospital, and not a medical examination inside the prison, but a move to Shifa, a private hospital in the capital, where doctors chosen by Khan and his family would treat him. The party has argued that only his own physicians can be trusted to assess and manage his condition, a position that reflects the deep mistrust between the party and the authorities over how Khan’s health has been handled in custody. The demand was repeated at opposition meetings in Islamabad this week, where party leaders raised Khan’s health alongside their plans for a joint opposition gathering.

2.2 The August Supreme Court order

The family says a Supreme Court order from August requiring treatment at Shifa International Hospital has not been carried out. According to the family’s account, the order was made on August 18, 2026, over blood pressure and anxiety concerns, and it directed that Khan receive treatment at Shifa. Instead of a transfer to Shifa, Khan was taken to the state-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for a medical examination and then returned to his cell. The family has pointed to that sequence as evidence that the court’s direction was not followed in substance, and it has used the August order as the legal foundation for the renewed demand. Whether the order required admission at Shifa or only treatment there is part of what remains disputed, and no fresh court ruling on the point has been reported.

3. Why the accounts differ

3.1 The lawyer’s denial

Salman Safdar, the lawyer who met Khan on November 2, said he was not the source of the alarming health reports and described his role as limited to legal duties. His remarks cut directly against the assumption that the claim came from the meeting itself, because he was the only other named person in the room. Safdar did not, on the available summaries of his remarks, confirm or deny the reading itself; he said only that the alarming reports did not come from him. That leaves open the question of how the figure reached the party and the family, and it has allowed both sides of the dispute to cite the same meeting in support of different conclusions. The lawyer’s position has become the central complication in the story, because it separates the claim from the one person who could most directly confirm it.

3.2 The “generally fit” accounts

Multiple unnamed people familiar with the jail meeting said Khan mentioned a reading near 190 but looked generally fit, which has produced a disputed account of how serious the episode was. On this version, a high reading was indeed mentioned, but Khan’s appearance and demeanour did not suggest a man in immediate danger, and the alarm the party expressed was not matched by what those present observed. The gap between a single blood pressure figure and a person’s visible condition is a familiar one in medicine, where one reading can be high while the patient appears well, but it has become a political gap as well. Readers should treat the figure of 192 as a claim by the party and Khan’s family, not as a confirmed medical finding, and the conflicting descriptions of the same meeting are the reason that caution is necessary.

4. Khan’s health history in custody

4.1 Earlier concerns and the February appeals

Concerns about Khan’s health in custody are not new, and they have drawn international attention more than once this year. In February 2026, fourteen former international cricket captains appealed to Pakistan’s government, expressing what they called profound concern over reports on Khan’s health and prison conditions. That same month, more than 40 international public intellectuals, academics and activists issued a humanitarian appeal calling for his release and for urgent access to his family and physicians. Those appeals treated access to his own doctors as a central issue, the same issue at the heart of the current demand for a Shifa transfer. The appeals did not establish any medical fact about Khan’s condition, but they showed that his health had already become an international concern months before the November claim.

4.2 The August hospital examination

The August episode remains the closest parallel to the current dispute, because it too involved a court order, a hospital visit and conflicting accounts of what the doctors found. After the Supreme Court order, Khan was taken to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for a medical examination before being returned to his cell, rather than to Shifa as the family says the order required. During that hospital visit, his sister, who is also a doctor and personally checked his blood pressure, said Khan was completely healthy and fit, with his blood pressure at 120/80 and his eyesight having improved. That account, from a family member who examined him herself, described a man in good health, and it now sits uneasily beside the November claim of a reading of 192. The contrast between the two family accounts, three months apart, is one of the reasons the current figure is being treated with caution.

5. The court calendar around Khan

5.1 The November 5 Islamabad High Court hearing

Separately, the Islamabad High Court was due on Thursday, November 5, to hear a petition by members of the National Dialogue Committee seeking permission to meet Khan at Adiala jail, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. The petition is about access rather than treatment, but access and treatment have become linked in the family’s argument, because the family says that limits on who can see Khan are part of why his health cannot be independently checked. The hearing was scheduled for the same day the health claim dominated the news, which gave the court a live dispute to consider alongside a petition about visiting rights. No outcome of the hearing had been reported at the time this post was prepared, and any ruling on access would be a separate development from the medical claim itself.

5.2 The November 10 appeals in the £190 million case

The Islamabad High Court has also fixed November 10 for the appeals of Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi in the £190 million case, a date that keeps Khan’s legal calendar crowded in the days after the health claim. Khan was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment in the Al-Qadir Trust case in January 2025, followed in December by a further 17-year sentence and a fine in the Toshakhana-II case, and he has been held in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi since his arrest in 2023. The appeals are the formal route by which those convictions are challenged, and their scheduling means the health dispute is unfolding against a background of live criminal proceedings rather than in isolation. The court dates do not determine the medical question, but they do determine how much public and judicial attention will be on Khan in the coming week.

6. The opposition’s wider moves

6.1 The all-parties conference plan

Pakistan’s opposition parties have agreed to hold an all-parties conference within the next 10 days, after opposition leaders met at the Islamabad residence of Fazlur Rehman on November 4 and agreed to form the conference committees. The date and agenda are to be announced by the committee, but the gathering is intended as a show of joint opposition strength at a moment when the government faces pressure on several fronts. PTI leaders used the occasion to raise the health of their founder, and Salman Akram Raja said Khan’s blood pressure was not under control, repeating the claim that it had surged to 192 a day before his meeting with his lawyer. The health claim was therefore not raised in isolation but as part of a coordinated opposition effort, and the conference will be the next stage on which it is pressed.

6.2 How health became part of the politics

Khan’s health has become a political issue because it combines three things the opposition can use: a famous prisoner, a court order the family says was not followed, and a medical figure that is easy to repeat. The party has linked the reported reading to a broader argument about how Khan is treated in custody, and the demand for a Shifa transfer has become a test of whether the authorities will allow his own doctors to examine him. The government, for its part, has not published a medical account that would settle the question, which leaves the claim and the counter-accounts to compete in public. That competition is the reason the story has stayed in the headlines: it is not only about a blood pressure reading, but about who is believed when the state and the family disagree about a prisoner’s health.

7. What the government has and has not said

7.1 No published medical account

The government has not, in the reporting available, published its own medical account of the reported episode. No official statement has confirmed or denied the figure of 192, and no medical report from the jail or from any hospital has been released to support or challenge the party’s claim. That silence is itself part of the story, because it means the public record consists of the party’s claim, the lawyer’s denial of being its source, and the unnamed accounts describing Khan as generally fit. Without an official medical statement, there is no independent basis on which to judge whether the reading was accurate, whether it was a single spike or part of a pattern, or whether any treatment was given. The absence of a government account does not prove the claim, and it does not disprove it either.

7.2 Access limits and twice-weekly visits

The family says an Islamabad High Court permission for twice-weekly visits has not eased broad limits on access to Khan. On the family’s account, the formal permission to visit has not translated into the kind of regular, unrestricted access that would allow his health to be monitored by people he trusts. The long gap before the November 2 lawyer meeting, the first since April, is cited as evidence of those limits, and the family has argued that restricted access is itself a health risk because problems can go unnoticed. The authorities have not publicly explained the access arrangements in detail, and the November 5 court hearing on the National Dialogue Committee’s petition is one of the few formal routes by which access is being tested. Until access is widened or a medical account is published, the dispute over the reading will remain unresolved.

8. What remains unconfirmed and what to watch next

8.1 The unverified reading

The central fact of this story, the blood pressure reading of 192, remains unverified. It is a claim by PTI and by Khan’s family, reported in Pakistani media and repeated by the party’s secretary general, but no independent medical report has been published with it, and the lawyer who attended the meeting says he was not its source. Other people familiar with the meeting recalled a reading near 190 while describing Khan as generally fit, which supports the idea that a high figure was mentioned but not the party’s characterisation of its seriousness. The August precedent, in which Khan’s sister measured 120/80 and called him completely healthy and fit, shows that readings and assessments in this case have varied sharply. Until a doctor’s report is published, the figure should be treated as a claim, not as a finding.

8.2 What to watch next

The next steps are clear, and each will narrow the uncertainty in a different way. The Islamabad High Court hearing on access, due on November 5, will show whether the court is willing to widen the circle of people who can see Khan. Any government or hospital medical statement would settle the reading itself, and the absence of one will keep the claim contested. The November 10 appeals in the £190 million case will return attention to Khan’s legal position, and the opposition’s all-parties conference within 10 days will show whether the health claim becomes a sustained campaign or fades after a single news cycle. The most important development would be an examination by Khan’s own doctors at Shifa, because that is the step the party has demanded and the step the family says a Supreme Court order already requires. Until one of those things happens, the claim of 192 will remain what it is now: a serious allegation, publicly made, publicly disputed, and medically unconfirmed.

The dispute over Imran Khan’s health is, for now, a dispute over a number and over who may be believed about it. The party says the number is 192 and that it demands a hospital transfer; the lawyer says he did not originate the alarming reports; others who were there say Khan looked generally fit; and the government has said nothing in public that would settle the matter. The courts will have their say on access and on the appeals in the days ahead, and the opposition will have its say at the all-parties conference. What will decide the question is not another statement but a medical examination by doctors the family trusts, and until that happens the reading of 192 will remain a claim rather than a fact.

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