To hospital amid rumours

Nawaz Sharif has been shifted to hospital from jail for a ‘much-needed medical treatment’, but rumours are rife that the move is part of a political deal that would see the former prime minister fly out of Pakistan at a later stage, most likely on the pretext of the need for some treatment not available in the country.

However, what’s officially known is that Sharif has experienced medical complications while serving time at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail as part of his seven-year sentence handed down by an accountability court in December last year in the Al Azizia corruption reference.

Sharif’s transfer to the Services Hospital Lahore came yesterday on the recommendation of a six-member medical board that found him “suffering from multiple health issues that need immediate and specialised healthcare at a facility where care for multiple and complicated diseases is available”.

According to an official notification, the Kot Lakhpat jail superintendent shall ensure that Sharif is shifted back to prison once the medical examination is complete.

But what raises doubts on whether the former prime minister — who is well known to be a heart patient and has undergone heart surgeries in 2011 and 2016 — would ever undertake a return journey to prison is his shifting to the Services Hospital, a medical facility that does not offer treatment for any heart ailment.

Punjab Information Minister Fayyaz Chauhan says that Sharif will be taken to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology if needed. But that does not answer the most pertinent question: Why wasn’t a known heart patient moved to a heart treatment facility straightaway?

Rumours of an ‘NRO’ had been doing the rounds since at least September 2018 when Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz had their sentences in Avenfield flats reference suspended by a high court, leading to their release from jail on bail.

While the government denies the rumours, one of its staunch allies, Sheikh Rashid, sees the need for the PM to take the nation into confidence. Does the railways minister think that something’s cooking?

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2019.

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