Imran Khan, wife Bushra & 80 PTI leaders barred from leaving Pakistan: Report

New Delhi: Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were put on a no-fly list and barred from travelling abroad, a media report said on Thursday.

Apart from them, at least 80 other members of his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) were put on the list, news agency PTI reported citing the Samaa News channel.

Khan and several top leaders of the PTI party are facing cases following the violence after he was arrested on May 9 in a corruption case.

“The federal government has decided to add the names of 80 people, including PTI Chairman Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi, to the no-fly list,” the Samaa News channel reported.

However, there was no official confirmation on the development from Khan’s party, the news agency stated.

In addition to Khan and Bushra, those included in the list include PTI leaders Murad Saeed, Maleeka Bukhari, Fawad Chaudhry and Hammad Azhar, Qasim Suri, Asad Qaiser, Yasmin Rashid and Mian Aslam, the channel said, according to PTI.

Fawad Chaudhry has already quit the party but his name has been listed among those who cannot fly out of Pakistan.

The names of all the PTI leaders were put in the list on the recommendation of the “institutions concerned”, the news channel reported.

It said that the police department, National Accountability Bureau and the anti-corruption department had requested the Ministry of Interior to include these names to the no-fly list.

Pakistan authorities maintain different categories of people who are banned from leaving the country for various reasons, including those who face corruption cases.

But these lists had been used in the past by the governments to muzzle the opposition.

When Khan was the prime minister, names of several high-profile personalities, including PML-N leader and current prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, were put on the no-fly list.