Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi released from prison | Imran Khan News

The pair were sentenced to 14 years in prison in January on allegedly trumped-up corruption charges.

Bushra Bibi, the wife of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, has been released from prison almost nine months after the couple was convicted in a case related to the illegal sale of government gifts.

Bibi was released from Adiala Prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Thursday after being granted bail by the Islamabad High Court the previous day, confirmed Naeem Haider Panjutha, a lawyer for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party ), told Al Jazeera.

Both Bibi and Khan were sentenced to 14 years in prison in January after being found guilty on multiple counts of withholding and selling government gifts in violation of government regulations.

A court ruled that the couple had illegally sold gifts worth more than 140 million rupees ($501,000) that they received from a state treasury called Toshakhana, or treasury, during Khan’s 2018-2022 prime ministership.

The Khans deny the allegations and say they were fabricated by the government to harass the 72-year-old former cricket star, who has faced dozens of cases since being ousted as prime minister in 2022.

Since then, Khan has been in a standoff with the country’s powerful military generals, whom he is demanding back as current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The Sharif-led government says it is not interfering in the court process. The standoff has sparked the worst political unrest in decades in the country of 241 million people.

Khan remains very popular in Pakistan, with his candidates winning the most seats in February’s parliamentary elections.

Authorities have registered several cases against him since 2022, when he was removed in a no-confidence vote in parliament.

The former prime minister has been involved in more than 150 legal cases since his first arrest in May 2023, including for incitement to violence. In August 2023, he was jailed in a corruption case.

Bibi, Khan’s third wife, was first arrested in January. She and Khan were acquitted in July of charges that their marriage was unlawful, but she was quickly jailed again in the state gifts case.

PTI leader Gohar Ali Khan said that Bibi traveled to her residence in Islamabad after her release.