Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested and dragged from court on May 9 as he appeared to face charges in multiple graft cases, a dramatic escalation of political tensions that sparked violent demonstrations by his angry supporters across the country. The arrest of Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022 but remains the leading opposition figure, represented the latest confrontation to roil Pakistan, which has seen former prime ministers arrested over the years and interventions by its powerful military. Khan is not the first Pak PM to have been arrested. India’s neighbour has a history of improvising its PMs. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was arrested during the 1958 military coup by the martial law government and put in solitary confinement for anti-state activities without trial. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Before becoming the PM of the country, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had served as its fourth President from 1971 to 1973. In 1977, he was arrested for conspiring to murder a political opponent in 1974. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Benazir Bhutto was placed under house arrest many times after her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death and before she became the PM of the country. (Image: News18 Creative)
In 1999, Benazir was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for corruption, disqualified from holding public office and fined more than £5 million. (Image: News18 Creative)
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In 1999, Nawaz Sharif was exiled by General Pervez Musharraf. In September 2007, he returned to Islamabad, was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia to complete the three remaining years of his 10-year exile. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Sharif, along with his daughter Mariam Nawaz, was arrested again in July 2018 on charges of corruption. He was released two months later and jailed again in December in relation to his family’s ownership of steel mills in Saudi Arabia. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was arrested in 2019 for alleged corruption while awarding a multi-billion rupee import contract for LNG in 2013 when he was the minister for petroleum and natural resources. (Image: News18 Creative)
Shehbaz Sharif is the current Prime Minister of Pakistan and brother of former Pak PM Nawaz Sharif. Shehbaz was arrested in 2020 in a money laundering case. He was incarcerated pending trial and was released on bail in April 2021 by Lahore High Court. (Image: News18 Creative)
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In April 2022, Imran Khan was removed from power after a no-confidence vote in Parliament. Since then he had been campaigning for early elections. (Image: News18 Creative)
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Khan was arrested in May 2023 on corruption charges when he was entering the Islamabad High Court. (Image: News18 Creative)
