Imran Khan's Three Sisters Detained Under MPO, Challenge Orders in Lahore High Court

Update, October 12, 2026: PTI postponed the march from September 27 to October 4, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi announced on September 25. Afridi launched the march from Lakki Marwat on October 4. The report below describes the situation before the postponement.

Aleema Khan, the elder sister of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, was detained outside her Upper Mall residence in Lahore on September 20, 2026, after the city's Deputy Commissioner ordered her held for 30 days under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960. She was moved to Kot Lakhpat jail. In the days that followed, her sisters Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi were detained under the same law, bringing all three of Imran Khan's surviving sisters into custody within roughly 48 hours of each other.

How the detention happened

According to accounts from PTI and local reporting, Lytton Road police took Aleema Khan into custody as she was leaving her home, with her vehicle separately taken to the police station. The formal detention order, issued by Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Ali Ijaz under Section 3 of the MPO Ordinance, followed. That sequence — arrest first, paperwork after — is now central to the legal challenge against it. Noreen Niazi and Dr Uzma Khan were detained on similar 30-day orders from the same Lahore DC office in the days after Aleema's arrest.

Section 3 of the MPO Ordinance allows a district administration to detain a person for up to 30 days without a criminal charge or trial, on the grounds that their liberty poses a threat to public order. It is a preventive-detention power, not a criminal one — the sisters have not been accused of a specific offence, only deemed a risk under the ordinance's broad language.

The court challenge

A petition against the detention orders was filed in the Lahore High Court by Aleema Khan's son, Shahraiz Khan, through advocate Rana Mudassar Umar. The petition asks the court to declare the detentions illegal and order the sisters' immediate release, arguing procedural irregularity: that Aleema was already in custody before any detention order existed to justify holding her. On September 22, the Lahore High Court sought further arguments specifically on whether the petition is maintainable — a threshold question about whether the case can proceed at all before the court reaches the substance of the detention's legality — and adjourned the hearing to September 25.

That date falls two days before PTI's planned September 27 march on Islamabad, meaning the sisters could remain in custody through the protest itself even if the court ultimately rules in their favour later.

Part of a wider pre-march crackdown

The detentions are the latest and most personal escalation in a broader security build-out Punjab has assembled ahead of the march. The province has imposed a province-wide Section 144 ban on gatherings and formally requested Rangers deployment in four districts, and separately asked the federal government to suspend mobile and internet service in parts of Rawalpindi and Attock for the two days surrounding the march. Those measures target infrastructure and public assembly; detaining Imran Khan's sisters targets his family directly, a step PTI says is designed to pressure and intimidate rather than manage public order. It follows the broader clampdown, including the arrest of family members and party officials, that preceded the party's initial march announcement.

What happens next

Two threads run in parallel now: the Lahore High Court's Friday hearing on whether the sisters' petition can even proceed, and the march itself, three days out. Even a favourable maintainability ruling on September 25 would not automatically end the detentions — it would only clear the way for the court to examine whether Section 3 was properly invoked, a question that could take longer to resolve than the 30-day order itself runs. For a family that has spent much of the past two years contesting Imran Khan's own detention through the courts, the same legal terrain is now being fought over on behalf of his sisters.

Build Better Pakistan's Justice Desk tracks detention, due-process and civil-liberties developments as part of our ongoing coverage of Pakistan's courts.