A SUPREME Court order directing the hospitalisation of former prime minister Imran Khan for medical tests and treatment has now turned into a much bigger crisis than anyone anticipated.

After the court’s original order was disregarded by the government, like so many others before it, the matter landed before the Federal Constitutional Court via a separate case filed by three other Adiala inmates seeking similar treatment. The FCC has since taken control of the Imran Khan hospitalisation case as well, much to the SC’s chagrin.

To observers, the FCC’s move directly challenges a May ruling issued by Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi, in which he had described the SC and FCC as “coordinate courts exercising clearly demarcated jurisdictions over distinct matters”. However, the current dispute underlines a clear jurisdictional collision between the two courts, which still seem rather uncertain regarding what each is supposed to be doing since the 27th Amendment.

At the heart of the crisis is the 27th Amendment, which had substantially rearranged constitutional jurisdiction by creating a completely new judicial forum, the FCC, and placing major constitutional questions and fundamental rights matters within its domain. The FCC invoked that same jurisdiction days ago to summon the complete records of cases concerning Mr Khan’s hospital transfer from the SC, indicating that it intended to frame the matter as a question of determining whether prisoners are constitutionally entitled to such treatment.

However, it then went a step further and also fixed the case before itself. To its credit, the SC has responded with restraint. The three-member bench hearing the case merely remarked that the FCC’s order had raised “considerable legal and constitutional significance” and then adjourned for three weeks while seeking comment from the attorney general over whether the FCC’s order was, indeed, binding on the SC. Mr Khan’s hospitalisation, of course, seems moot at this point.

Perhaps matters were bound to arrive at this juncture thanks to the undue haste with which the 27th Amendment was foisted upon the nation. It appears that its text never settled the matter of what happens when a constitutional question arises in an ongoing SC case, especially when such a case pertains to the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Contempt of Court Ordinance, which are very much within the SC’s remit.

It is even more remarkable that a crisis of this nature has erupted at the highest level of the judiciary over what was otherwise a rather straightforward order to transfer an ailing prisoner to a hospital and get them the treatment required. It is certainly not a good look for the current dispensation that the fragility of the architecture that props it up keeps being exposed, and over matters that ought to be minor in perspective.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2026