Imran Khan

Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi is a Pakistani former cricketer, philanthropist and politician who served as the 19th prime minister of Pakistan from August 2018 until April 2022, born in Lahore on 5 October 1952. As a cricketer he captained the Pakistan national team to victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. After retiring from cricket he founded the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Pakistan's first cancer hospital, and founded the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which he chaired from 1996 to 2023. ^{1 2 3 4}

Khan was born in Lahore on 5 October 1952, the only son of Ikramullah Khan Niazi, a civil engineer, and his wife Shaukat Khanum; he has four sisters. Some reports give a different birth date (25 November 1952); the article records his own statement that this is a mistake from his passport. He attended Aitchison College and Cathedral School in Lahore, moved to Royal Grammar School Worcester in England in September 1971, and in 1972 was admitted to Keble College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics, graduating in 1975. ¹

The museum records his family life only in outline: he married Jemima Goldsmith in 1995 and they had two sons, divorcing in 2004; he married Reham Khan in 2015, divorcing the same year; and he married Bushra Bibi in 2018. ¹

He made his first-class debut at 16 in Lahore, played for the Oxford University team from 1973 to 1975 and played English county cricket in the 1970s. He began his international career in a 1971 Test series against England, advocateded neutral umpiring during his captaincy, led Pakistan to its first-ever Test series victories in India and England in 1987, and captained Pakistan for most of the 1980s and early 1990s. He achieved the all-rounder's triple of 3,000 runs and 300 wickets in Tests and holds the world record for the most wickets as a captain in Test cricket. He played his last Test in January 1992 against Sri Lanka and retired after captaining Pakistan to its only World Cup title in the 1992 final. His final figures were 88 Tests with 3,807 runs and 362 wickets, and 175 ODIs with 3,709 runs and 182 wickets. He was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009. As captain and talent-spotter he is also credited with selecting players who became pillars of the next generation, among them Waqar Younis, whom he spotted on television, and Inzamam-ul-Haq, whom he handpicked for the 1992 World Cup. ^{1 3}

After retiring from cricket he established the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in Lahore — Pakistan's first cancer hospital, named for his mother — which became the best known of his charitable projects, alongside later education projects in Mianwali that the article records. He served as Chancellor of the University of Bradford from 2005 to 2014. ¹

He founded Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on 25 April 1996 and chaired it until 2 December 2023, and was first elected to the National Assembly in 2002. In the 2018 general election he contested five constituencies and became the first person in Pakistan's electoral history to win all five, then became prime minister on 18 August 2018 in a PTI-led coalition government. During his premiership he launched Pakistan's largest welfare programme during the COVID-19 pandemic and spoke out against Islamophobia in the Western world, as the article records. In April 2022 he became the first Pakistani prime minister to be removed from office through a no-confidence motion. He alleged United States involvement in his removal, a claim denied by the government and the military establishment as the sources report. ^{1 3}

This section is reported from the sources and is not a verdict by the museum. The sources report that in October 2022 the Election Commission barred him from holding elected office for one term over the Toshakhana case; that the following month he survived an assassination attempt; that in May 2023 he was arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust case, triggering the May 9 riots, and the Supreme Court later declared that arrest unlawful, after which he was arrested again in August 2023; and that in January 2025 he was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment in the Al-Qadir Trust case, followed by a further 17-year sentence and a fine in the Toshakhana-II case as the article records. Khan has alleged that his imprisonment is politically motivated, a claim denied by the Shehbaz Sharif government and the post-2022 military establishment as the sources report. He has been held in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi since his arrest in 2023. ¹

His public significance lies in his captaincy of Pakistan to its only Cricket World Cup title, his founding of his country's first cancer hospital, and his passage from elected prime minister to his country's most prominent imprisoned opposition figure as the sources describe him — a single public life joining sport, philanthropy and politics. ^{1 3}

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