Long read: Prisoner number 804: the plot to erase Imran Khan

Those of us who grew up in the 1980s, hated Imran Khan for his swagger, his talent, his charisma, his…the list is endless but all of this was because Imran all but ensured that from 1980-95, Pakistan ritually thrashed India in what felt like every cricket match. All of this meant however that we admired the man and his leadership skills and we secretly wished that one day India too would have a leader like him. It is those same qualities which propelled Imran to the top of the political pole in Pakistan and that is when the military decided to go after him. As Osman Samiuddin writes:

“On 9 May 2023, a year after he was removed as prime minister, Imran was arrested on corruption charges. He would be released on bail within days, but not before the arrest sparked rioting across the country, with anger directed squarely at the army. A few days later, stunned and stung by the reaction, senior military officials summoned owners of major media organisations, publishers, news directors and anchors to a meeting in Islamabad.

When I met one person who was at that meeting, they [said] “We were told that Imran’s name and images should not be on TV,” the attender said. “Told expressly and expressively.”….

Once he was rearrested in August 2023, his trials became an active story. Reportage of these was controlled at source, with only a handful of journalists allowed into closed hearings, held inside jail….. The state doesn’t want him seen or heard. To that end, putting him in a 6ft by 8ft cell in Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, serving two sentences – 14 and 17 years (consecutively) – for corruption, is perfect.”

Imran has now spent almost three years in jail with the past year in solitary captivity in a tiny cell in Rawalpindi which one source says is a “death cell”: Mr Samiuddin writes: “By the time I was reporting in Pakistan last summer, Imran’s jailers had taken away his newspapers and books, and sharply limited his visitors. There were no hearings, and he was only allowed to see two of his sisters, Uzma and Noreen Khan, under strict supervision…. earlier this year there was another intimation of mortality, when it emerged he had lost much of his vision in one eye because, his lawyers claimed, prison authorities neglected to treat him promptly.”

Given that the military regime in Pakistan can keep Imran locked up indefinitely, given that he’s 73 now, has lost one eye and is presumably physically depleted after 3 years of being locked up, why are they so scared of him? Why isn’t any media outlet allowed to take his name? Mr Samiuddin helps us understand the paranoia by giving a sense of the hold Imran Khan exerts on the Pakistani public:

“When he was put in jail, he was assigned the prisoner number 804. Not long afterwards, the number started popping up on car registration plates (one TikToker was arrested for driving with a forged IK-804 plate). The number was put to song (most famously by Malkoo). It turned up as graffiti. It was chanted at Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium during big cricket games: “Tera yaar, mera yaar, Qaidi No 804!” (“Your friend, my friend, prisoner No 804” – with the rhyme on “chaar”, Urdu for four). A Peshawari sandal-maker put the number on one of his designs and it became his bestseller. In Leicester and Jeddah, you can dine at restaurants named 804. At a takeaway in Birmingham, you can order the special 804 biryani. The very marker of his captivity became its own kind of freedom.

There’s more out there – the jail officials detained for helping Imran by passing on messages, the cricketer Aamer Jamal handed a large fine for writing 804 on his hat….”

And there is one more reason why the military dictatorship in Pakistan is scared of Imran Khan. Like we realised in the 1980s, they understand that he’s a remarkable physical specimen, a man apart:

“….nearly every account from those who had met him in jail, made a point – usually unprompted – of how fit he is looking. How jail has turned him into an athlete again. How he spends a couple of hours each day working out…with time on his hands, he’d lost it, and was fitter than ever. One of the first privileges his lawyers secured was an exercise bike and a set of 12kg weights.

This gaze was natural when he was an athlete, and even then he was feted as a specimen apart. But as his political career has progressed, so he has leaned into the idea that being physically stronger makes him a better man and leader.

A mythology of invulnerability has grown around him. I was reminded by party workers, for example, of how quickly he recovered after fracturing his back falling off a stage at an election rally in 2013. When he was shot three years ago, multiple witnesses stressed that he was the calmest man in the melee. Despite being struck on the shin, he insisted that he would not come out of the bus on a stretcher. He wanted to be upright in front of his supporters.”

We hope and pray that the Pakistani regime will see merit in releasing Imran Khan. We thank the former Pakistani captain for showing us in the 1980s and in the 1992 World Cup in Australia how cornered tigers fight.

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