After days of growing speculation, Pakistan is once again caught in a familiar atmosphere of secrecy, fear and rumour. Unverified social media posts and reports from Afghan media have claimed that former prime minister Imran Khan has been “mysteriously killed” inside Adiala Jail, allegedly on the orders of Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and the ISI. While Pakistani authorities have dismissed the rumours, they have offered no proof of Khan’s wellbeing.
Outside Adiala, his three sisters say they were beaten and dragged by police when they tried to see him and demand a meeting. Videos from Rawalpindi show women being manhandled, their chadors pulled, as they ask a basic question: where is Imran Khan. They have now called for an inquiry and “proof of life,” while thousands of supporters gather outside the prison and rumours of his death race through Pakistan’s tightly controlled information space.
The anxiety is sharpened by Khan’s own words from jail. In July he told his party that if anything happened to him behind bars, Pakistan’s powerful army chief must be held responsible. “Therefore, I give clear instructions to my party, if anything happens to me in jail, Asim Munir must be held accountable,” he said, accusing the military of inhuman treatment and of stripping him of basic rights. In another message he warned that “if anything happens to me or my wife, it will be him who will be responsible.”
While these speculations may just be gossip, they tap into a long and bloody history in which civilian leaders are assassinated, hanged, ousted or silence, while the military establishment floats above the law.
A state where prime ministers rarely survive power
Since 1947, not a single Pakistani prime minister has completed a full five-year term. Coups, palace intrigues, assassinations and court disqualifications have been the norm. Pakistan’s first nationwide coup came in 1958 when General Ayub Khan imposed martial law, sidelined the civilian leadership and pushed Governor General Iskander Mirza into exile. Later, General Yahya Khan presided over the breakup of Pakistan in 1971.
In 1977, General Zia ul Haq overthrew Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s elected government, imposed martial law, suspended the constitution and banned political parties. In 1999, General Pervez Musharraf toppled Nawaz Sharif in yet another coup. The pattern is simple and ugly. When civilian leaders become inconvenient, the barracks move in, and Pakistan’s fragile democracy is pushed aside.
Within this militarised framework, political assassinations and “mysterious” deaths have repeatedly removed elected leaders from the scene, often with investigations that go nowhere.
Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister gunned down
Pakistan’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in October 1951 while addressing a public rally at Company Bagh in Rawalpindi, later renamed Liaquat Bagh. He was shot twice in the chest by an Afghan national, Said Akbar, who was himself killed on the spot by police.
The assassin died before he could be properly interrogated, and investigators never convincingly established who ordered the killing. Over the decades, theories have implicated everyone from foreign powers to Pakistan’s own establishment. What is clear is that the country’s first elected leader was removed with a bullet, and no one of consequence was ever punished. That early crime set the tone for how easily the country’s power structure could dispose of a civilian prime minister.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto - a “judicial assassination”
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected prime minister under the 1973 constitution, was ousted by General Zia ul Haq in the 1977 coup. Two years later, in 1979, Bhutto was hanged after a deeply controversial trial on charges of conspiring to murder a political opponent.
International observers, human rights groups and many legal experts have long described Bhutto’s execution as a “judicial murder,” engineered by the military regime to remove a popular civilian rival. Zia’s martial law courts delivered the outcome the general wanted. Once again, the army’s will overrode democratic choice and the rule of law, reinforcing the message that elected leaders are expendable.
Zia-ul-Haq and the C-130 crash that no one solved
In August 1988, military ruler President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq died when the C-130 Hercules aircraft carrying him crashed near Bahawalpur, along with several top generals and the US ambassador. Officially, the cause of the crash was never conclusively determined.
Conspiracy theories flourished. One widely cited theory suggests a box of mangoes loaded onto the plane contained a device that released gas, incapacitating the pilots. Others have pointed at internal rivals, foreign intelligence agencies or a mix of both. Decades later, Pakistan has still not produced a credible, transparent account of how its most powerful general died in the sky.
The lack of answers fits a larger culture of opacity. Whether a civilian is hanged or a dictator falls from the sky, the truth is buried under layers of bureaucracy, secrecy and “national security.”
Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in a garrison city
On 27 December 2007, two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, the heart of Pakistan’s military establishment. As she left an election rally, shots were fired at her and a suicide bomber detonated explosive, killing her and more than 20 others. A few months earlier she had survived an attack in Karachi that killed over 130 people.
A United Nations inquiry later criticised the Musharraf government for failing to protect her and for obstructing the investigation. The crime scene was hosed down within hours, destroying key evidence. While the Pakistani Taliban were blamed, no powerful mastermind has ever been held to account. Once again, a civilian leader threatening the status quo was eliminated in a city controlled by Pakistan’s deep state, and the case faded into ambiguity.
A wider trail of blood
Beyond these headline cases, Pakistan’s political landscape is littered with assassinations and attempts on the lives of politicians, provincial leaders and reformers. From ANP’s Bashir Ahmed Bilour and his son Haroon Bilour, to religious scholar Maulana Sami ul Haq and MQM’s Ali Raza Abidi, many prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks.
Imran Khan himself survived an assassination attempt in November 2022, when he was shot in the leg during a protest march in Wazirabad. One supporter was killed and several others were injured. Khan immediately framed the attack as politically motivated, pointing fingers at elements within the establishment.
In each case, investigations have been slow, politicised or simply inconclusive. The message that filters down to the public is clear. Violence against politicians is part of Pakistan’s political grammar, not an exception.
Military dominance and the Imran Khan question
Today, Imran Khan sits in a prison cell controlled by a security state that he openly accuses of running “undeclared martial law.” He has said from jail that the ISI controls every detail of his confinement and that he is being treated “worse than convicted terrorists.”
The army chief he sacked as ISI director in 2019 is now Field Marshal Asim Munir, widely described as the most powerful man in Pakistan. Khan has repeatedly told his party and supporters that “there is only one man taking action against me and that is the army chief,” and has instructed them to hold Munir responsible if anything happens to him or his wife in custody.
Whether the current rumours around Imran Khan are true or false, they sit perfectly inside Pakistan’s long pattern of coup plots, assassination attempts, unexplained crashes and judicial killings, all orbiting around a single gravitational centre, the military establishment. In such a system, civilians are disposable, institutions are pliable, and truth itself becomes a hostage.
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