Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Khan, were both sentenced on February 3 to seven years in prison in an unlawful marriage case that marks the former leader's third prison sentence in a matter of days.
A civil court in Rawalpindi concluded that the Khans' 2018 wedding took place during Islam's mandatory three-month waiting period, called "iddat," after the death of a spouse or the dissolution of a marriage.
Khan, 71, a retired cricket star who was prime minister in 2018-22, has already been sentenced to a combined 24 years in prison and barred from holding office for a decade.
With days to go before February 8 elections, Khan and his PTI party still enjoy huge popularity.
Both Khans were sentenced to 14 years in prison on January 31 in a corruption case, a day after he was convicted to 10 years for leaking state secrets in a separate trial, according to his Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf (PTI) party.
The Anti-Corruption Court in Islamabad found them guilty of unlawfully selling state gifts worth more than 140 million rupees ($501,000) during his term from 2018 until his ouster in a no-confidence vote in April 2022.
The court also barred Khan from holding public office for 10 years, the PTI said. His wife, commonly referred to as Bushra Bibi, was arrested shortly after the verdict was handed down, it said.
Khan is already in prison after being sentenced to three years in August by another court for selling the gifts received during his premiership in the case known as Tosha Khana, after the place where dignitaries are supposed to hand over items received while in office.
While linked to the same matter, the January 31 verdict followed a separate investigation by Pakistan's anti-corruption agency, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which had also charged his wife in the case.
One day earlier, a special court sentenced Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, one of his PTI party deputies, to 10 years in prison each for revealing state secrets.
Khan has already been barred from taking part in parliamentary elections scheduled for February 8 because of a previous conviction stemming from his waving of a confidential diplomatic document at a public rally following his ouster in 2022.
At the time, Khan claimed that the document was proof that Pakistan's powerful military in coordination with the United States were behind his ouster. Both have rejected the accusations.
On October 21, three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Khan's longtime rival, returned to Pakistan from four years of self-imposed exile and launched the election campaign of his Pakistan Muslim League party at a huge rally in the eastern city of Lahore.
The Muslim League and Khan's PTI are seen as the main competitors in the upcoming elections.
Pakistan, a nation of 241 million people, is grappling with a severe economic crisis that has seen living standards plunge rapidly.