Pakistani politics hits a new low as Imran Khan is caught in another row

The Pakistan army has ensured that former prime minister and founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), Imran Khan, sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss of criminal cases. While most of these are ‘political’ in nature, one that is now being actively pursued against him is intensely ‘personal’. These include charges of his violating the Official Secrets Act or taking undue financial advantage by retaining expensive official gifts given by foreign dignitaries. In addition, after the PTI supporters rioted and destroyed defence services’ properties on May 9, 2023, Imran Khan has also been charged with encouraging his supporters to riot. These are all, however, concerned with his political actions. Personal attack The personal case is perhaps unprecedented in Pakistan’s history against a political leader who has remained the country’s prime minister. It has been filed by his current wife, Bushra Bibi’s ex-husband, Khawar Maneka, against Khan and Bushra Bibi, alleging that they had possibly engaged in adulterous conduct. Maneka has also alleged that he divorced Bushra Bibi ‘half-heartedly’ and that after the divorce, Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi got married within the ‘iddat’ period; hence, their marriage was not legal. In Islamic law, the Iddat period is one in which a divorced lady or a widow cannot get married. The period varies for both categories of ladies, but a divorced woman has to usually wait for a period of three lunar months before she can remarry. According to Maneka, he divorced Bushra Bibi on November 14, 2017, and Imran Khan married her in January 2018. However, Bushra Bibi claims that a period of seven months—well beyond the Iddat period—had passed before she married Khan. Maneka’s case against the couple was filed some months ago but it has now acquired importance because a Rawalpindi court on January 16 indicted Khan and Bushra Bibi under three sections of the Pakistan penal code. Maneka’s case against the couple was filed some months ago, but it has now acquired importance because a Rawalpindi court on January 16 indicted Khan and Bushra Bibi under three sections of the Pakistan penal code. According to Pakistan’s authoritative newspaper, Dawn, these include Section 496 (the marriage ceremony fraudulently gone through without lawful marriage) and Section 496B, which relates to fornication. These are serious charges that would be deeply embarrassing to Bushra Bibi, who has projected herself as a pirni or spiritual person. They should therefore be distressing to Imran Khan too because they go to his gairat or pride as a husband. That aside, it is unlikely if charges of inappropriate sexual conduct have ever troubled Khan. If anything, he has, since his youth until now, gloried in his image as a playboy who, even with his advancing years—he has turned seventy now—is irresistible to women. Any other leader would have cringed at the release of what can only be called his pornographic conversations with women, but not Imran Khan. Not only he, but his supporters too, took them in stride. These audio tapes also seemed to make no difference to his popularity. That, of course, reveals a lot about Pakistani society and polity. Different case But the Maneka case is different because it does not concern his reputation alone. It has the possibility of landing his wife and him in great legal trouble. The facts of his relationship with Bushra Bibi and his subsequent marriage are, prima facie, bizarre. Maneka was a Customs officer who rose to senior positions. Bushra Bibi and he got married in 1989 when she was eighteen. They had five children—three daughters and two sons. It is said that there was a spiritual side to her personality which became more prominent as she became older. As was her family, she too became a devotee of Baba Farid. Imran Khan began to claim, around a decade ago, that he too had begun to be drawn to Sufism and to Baba Farid. Imran Khan was introduced to Bushra Bibi in 2014-15, it is said, in the ‘spiritual’ context. He began to consult her and spent hours in her company. In his petition Maneka says that Khan did so in his absence and that he found Imran Khan’s presence at his home offensive and once threw him out with the help of his servants. In 2016-17 reports began to circulate that Bushra Bibi had said that Imran Khan would become prime minister provided she married him. All this seemed strange but in 2017 Bushra Bibi, a pirni, forty-six years old, with five grown up children, was divorced by her husband and married Khan. Photographs of the marriage showed Bushra Bibi veiled and with her children surrounding her. Khan was then sixty-five. It was, of course, the army which manipulated the 2018 elections and ensured that Imran Khan reached the prime minister’s chair. But what could not be denied is that Bushra Bibi’s prophecy proved to be correct! Munir warned Khan Imran Khan became Pakistan’s prime minister in August 2018. He was known to be a ‘selected’ PM and the government he ran was called ‘hybrid’. The word indicated that the then army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa was the dominant partner in the government enterprise and especially controlled the country’s security and critical foreign policies. In autumn 2018 Bajwa chose Lt Gen Asim Munir as Director- General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (DG ISI). Technically, this post requires the prime minister’s approval but no army chief has really ever been happy at any PM interfering in any posting in the army, including that of DG ISI. Bushra Bibi remained in purdah even when Imran Khan became prime minister. It was however believed that she and her close friends had subtly begun to intervene in administrative matters and were making money, including through selling expensive official gifts received by Imran Khan in his capacity as PM. As a conscientious officer Munir warned Khan that his image was taking a beating because of Bushra Bibi and her friends’ activities. Khan was enraged with Munir for making these charges against his wife and pressed Bajwa to replace him with Lt Gen Faez Hameed. Bajwa agreed. Munir left the ISI in June 2019 and Faez Hameed was appointed DG ISI. He soon became Khan’s and Bushra Bibi’s favourite general for he helped them politically. It is believed that Bushra Bibi told Khan that as long as Faez Hameed remained DG ISI he would have no trouble in continuing as prime minister. Indeed, Khan’s troubles began when he resisted Bajwa’s decision to move Faez Hameed out of the ISI in October 2021. Bajwa and he fell out and by April 2022 the army generals led by Bajwa ensured that Khan was out of power. Munir has neither forgotten nor forgiven What is relevant for Khan’s present troubles, including the personal case that is bound to drag him and his wife through the mud, is that Munir has neither forgotten nor forgiven Bushra Bibi for having him removed from the DG ISI’s job in 2019. But there is another reason why the Pakistani political class and the army have obviously encouraged Maneka to proceed with the case, even though he had divorced Bushra Bibi in 2017. This is because Imran Khan’s personal record of misconduct with women has been intolerable to many. Even more, he had been instrumental in ensuring that the privacy of Nawaz Sharif’s daughter, Maryam Nawaz, was brutally intruded upon in October 2020 in Karachi. Maryam and her husband Safdar were staying in a Karachi hotel when the police broke open the door to arrest Safdar. At that time, both were sleeping in their hotel room. This ‘insult’ and, in addition, Maryam’s arrest and incarceration have obviously not been forgotten. It is payback time for Imran Khan, and in the process, Pakistani politics is now reaching a new low. The elections are just three weeks away, and by now the decks have been so stacked against Imran Khan that he is being pushed into political irrelevance. He continues to be in Adiala Jail, and his party is without a symbol, forcing PTI nominees to contest as independents. Unless a miracle occurs, Khan and Bushra Bibi may well have the linen of their marriage displayed in public, and it may not be clean. The writer is a former Indian diplomat who served as India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan and Myanmar, and as secretary, the Ministry of External Affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. 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