LAHORE: An anti-corruption court on Thursday granted interim pre-arrest bail of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s daughter Rabia Imran and her husband Ali Imran Yousaf in a case of alleged irregularities in the Punjab Saaf Pani Company (PSPC).

The couple appeared before the court, where Judge Javed Iqbal Warraich presided over the proceedings.

The court allowed the bail petitions and sought a reply from the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) by the next hearing on May 4.

The couple had earlier been declared proclaimed offenders due to their absence from the country. They later approached an accountability court, which last week suspended their arrest warrants and allowed them to surrender before the law.

However, the case was transferred to the anti-corruption court as the accountability court lost jurisdiction following amendments to the National Accountability Ordinance.

The couple was accused of getting illegal monetary benefits by renting out their building to PSPC to establish its office.

Other suspects, including PM Shehbaz and senior bureaucrats, have already been acquitted in the case.

The Saaf Pani scam had surfaced after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had launched a thorough probe in November 2017 into alleged corruption in the 56 public-sector companies, including the PSPC, formed by the administration in Punjab led by Shehbaz at the time.

These companies were accused of certain irregularities, recruitment in violation of procurement rules and merit, nepotism, and non-completion of various projects in time.

NAB had launched a probe against Yousaf, accusing him of getting Naveed Akram appointed as chief financial officer of PSPC in violation of merit. Akram was also accused of transferring Rs120 million to Yousaf’s account.

Imran and her husband also secured interim pre-arrest bail in a money laundering case on Tuesday from a special court.

Judge Ashfaq Ahmed heard and allowed the bail petitions of the couple, subject to submission of surety bonds, and restrained the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) from arresting them till May 7.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday launched the “PM Apna Ghar Programme” under which housing loans of Rs10 million will be given on easy instalments.

The scheme will be implemented in the federal capital, all four provinces, as well as Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Addressing the launch ceremony in Islamabad, PM Shehbaz said a total of 500,000 housing units will be constructed under the programme, supported by a total allocation of Rs3.2 trillion.

The loans are to be returned in 20 years, he said. During the first 10 years, the markup on the loan will be 5 per cent, while in the next 10 years it will be charged at the market rate at the time.

The premier said that for the first year, the government has set a target to fund 50,000 houses for which an amount of Rs321 billion had been earmarked. Under the scheme, a maximum of 10 marla housing units will be allowed to be built.

PM Shehbaz said he would personally review the programme’s progress on a monthly basis to address any shortcomings and ensure timely payments.

Besides the new housing programme, under the PM Fuel Package 2026, Rs1.2bn has been disbursed digitally to over 32,000 beneficiaries, including operators of buses, trucks, long-haul vehicles, and delivery vans. The initiative aims to provide relief amid rising fuel costs.

Meanwhile, the European Investment Bank’s international development arm, EIB Global, is committing a total of €160m to help Pakistan rebuild homes in Sindh and to improve water quality in Karachi – the country’s largest city.

Israel’s army arrested around 175 activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece, the Israeli foreign ministry and the flotilla’s organisers said on Thursday.

The ministry said “approximately 175 activists from more than 20 boats” were being taken to Israel. The statement included a video of the activists aboard an Israeli navy ship.

The organisers of the latest flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists seeking to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza had announced shortly beforehand that their boats were surrounded by Israeli military ships while off the coast of the Greek island of Crete.

Israel controls all entry points to Gaza, and has been accused by the United Nations and foreign NGOs of strangling the flow of goods into the territory, causing shortages since the start of the war in October 2023.

The flotilla, made up of more than 50 boats, set sail in recent weeks from Marseille in France, Barcelona in Spain and Syracuse in Italy.

In a post to X overnight, the Global Sumud Flotilla said that Israeli military boats had “illegally surrounded the flotilla in international waters and threatened kidnapping and violence”.

“Communications with 11 vessels have been lost,” the organisation added. The flotilla is currently off the coast of Greece, near Crete, according to the organisation’s live tracking on its website.

“Our boats were approached by military speedboats, self-identified as ‘Israel’, pointing lasers and semi-automatic assault weapons ordering participants to the front of the boats and to get on their hands and knees,” the organisation added.

“Boat communications are being jammed and a SOS was issued.”

In late 2025, an initial flotilla of about 50 boats, composed of political figures and activists such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, was boarded by the Israeli navy — illegally, according to the organisers and Amnesty International. The crew members were arrested and expelled by Israel.

Israel weaponsing access to water in Gaza: MSF

Meanwhile, according to a report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Israeli authorities have used access to water as a “weapon against Palestinians, systematically depriving people in Gaza, Palestine, of water in a campaign of collective punishment”.

MSF, in a statement, said that the “deliberate denial of water from Palestinians is an integral part of Israel’s genocide”.

“After the local authorities, MSF is the largest producer and a main distributor of drinking water in Gaza, yet between May and November 2025, one in every five of our water distributions ran dry as our trucks were unable to carry sufficient water for all the people who required it,” the organisation said.

Due to the Israeli military’s displacement orders, MSF teams were unable to reach areas where it previously provided water, the statement said.

It added that around “one-third” of MSF’s requests to “bring in critical water and sanitation supplies have been rejected or left unanswered”.

“These supplies include water desalination units, pumps, chlorine and other chemicals to treat water, water tanks, insect repellent, and latrines,” it said.

MSF warned that the consequences of the deprivation could be “far-reaching on people’s health, hygiene, and dignity”.

ISLAMABAD: A day after the government notified the transfer of three Islamabad High Court (IHC) judges to other high courts, the Lahore Bar Association (LBA) moved the Supreme Court on Thursday to challenge the constitutionality of the 27th Constitutional Amendment under which these transfers were made.

On Tuesday, the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) approved the transfer of three judges from the IHC to other courts in a move that drew sharp criticism from lawyers’ bodies for lacking transparency and uniform criteria.

Senior counsel Hamid Khan approached the SC, instead of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), on behalf of LBA President Irfan Hayat Bajwa, seeking a declaration that the recent transfer of three judges from the IHC to other high courts is unconstitutional and of no legal effect.

The bar association also requested the SC to declare the omission and repeal of Article 184(3) of the Constitution — an inherent jurisdiction of the SC for the enforcement of fundamental rights but now repealed — through the 27th Amendment as void, unconstitutional and of no effect, being against the basic/salient features of the Constitution.

The petition has also sought a declaration that the now-inserted Article 175(2) — as amended by the 27th Amendment — was void and unconstitutional, and that its formation was also unconstitutional, as it was against the constitutional fundamentals, which the parliament had no power to change or amend.

In the absence of any substantive and disclosed reasons, criteria, or demonstrable institutional necessity, the transfers of IHC judges are unlawful and liable to be declared arbitrary, mala fide in law, and based on extraneous considerations, the petition pleaded.

Similarly, it stated that the transfers had been made without any disclosed reasons, criteria, or demonstrable public interest, thereby rendering the exercise of power arbitrary, opaque, and liable to be set aside.

The Constitution does not contemplate an unstructured or ad hoc exercise of transfer powers; rather, in the present scenario involving multiple transfers, there was a pressing need for a structured, periodic, and across-the-board rotation policy, based on uniform and transparent criteria through law or subordinate legislation, which is conspicuously absent, the petition prayed further.

The petition also argued that the purported 27th Amendment omitted Article 184(3), under which the SC has original jurisdiction to enforce the Constitution and fundamental rights of the people, and that the judicial power of the SC could not be taken away by another branch of the government, i.e., the parliament.

Such an amendment undermines the Constitution and destroys the independence of the judiciary, the petition contended.

The SC being an indivisible judicial institution at the apex, its powers and jurisdiction can not be taken away, the petition emphasised, adding the independence of the judiciary and its necessary parts/concomitants were the appointments, transfers and removal of judges of the superior courts form part of the basic features of the Constitution which were unamendable.

Article 200, having been amended by the parliament, lacked the constituent power as it lacked the mandate and the authority to pass an amendment that destroyed the judicial branch of the government, making it a subservient institution to the executive, which is the biggest violator of people’s rights and mandate, the petition said.

The petition also explained that judges of the FCC, being the beneficiaries and judges in their own cause, and also the creation and its jurisdiction having been challenged through this petition, cannot hear and decide the constitutionality of the 27th Amendment and matters arising thereunder.

Moreover, the action of transfer of judges of IHC under Article 200 as amended by the 27th Amendment cannot be heard by “so-called FCC”, being itself a creation of that amendment, the petition argued.

The petition alleged that the 27th Amendment was a fraud on the electorate and people of Pakistan since neither any of the political parties nor any other member of Parliament had the mandate to vote for the amendment, as they had not been given the mandate to do so by the people.

Nor was it a part of their election(s) manifestos, nor did they have the power to amend the Constitution, as their authority, being a trust as enjoined in the preamble to the Constitution, read with the Objectives Resolution of 1949, which was now a substantive part of the Constitution, could undermine and destroy the independence of the judiciary, the petition stated.

The transfer of judges suffers from the absence of institutional necessity, and in the absence of justification, such actions assume a punitive character, effectively amounting to the removal or sidelining of Judges without due process of law, the petition argued.

Transfer of judges

The transfers from the IHC follow an amendment to Article 200 of the Constitution, which empowers the JCP to recommend such transfers without requiring the consent of the judges concerned. Prior to the amendment introduced through the 27th Constitutional Amendment, a judge’s consent was mandatory for transfer from one high court to another. The revised provision has now vested this authority in the JCP.

It also stipulates that a judge who refuses to accept a transfer may face proceedings under Article 209 before the Supreme Judicial Council.

The transferred judges were among the six who had, in a startling letter written to Supreme Judicial Council members in March 2024, accused the country’s intelligence apparatus of interference in judicial affairs, including attempts to pressure judges through abduction and torture of their relatives and secret surveillance inside their homes.

They were also among the five judges who had formally opposed in February 2025 the then-potential transfer of then-LHC Justice Dogar, warning that his elevation as the IHC chief justice would violate constitutional procedures and judicial norms.

Nevertheless, Justice Dogar was appointed as the acting IHC chief justice on Feb 13, 2025. The next day, he took the oath in a ceremony where all IHC judges were invited, but five of them — including those being transferred — did not attend the ceremony and boycotted it.

Following the development, the IHC went through a major administrative restructuring, which notably reduced the authority of senior puisne judge Justice Kayani — who previously held key decision-making roles — following amendments to the high court rules.

The IHC Administration Com­mittee, previously comprising the chief justice, the senior puisne judge and a senior judge, was restructured to include CJ Dogar and two of his nominees. This reconstitution significantly altered the court’s decision-making authority.

Justice Dogar later took his oath as the IHC CJ on July 8, 2025. And the five IHC senior judges who had opposed his transfer were sidelined in the subsequent reshuffling of key committees.

In September last year, the five judges had submitted separate petitions to the Supreme Court together against a number of issues affecting the court, from the composition of benches to rosters to case transfers.

ISLAMABAD: Counsel for former prime minister Imran Khan on Thursday urged the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to consider his client’s release on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, citing prolonged solitary confinement and an eye infection.

Defence counsel Salman Safdar’s request came as the IHC took up appeals filed by Imran and his spouse, Bushra Bibi, against their conviction in the £190 million corruption reference.

During the hearing, Safdar requested the court to suspend the sentence, arguing that the case had remained pending for over 16 months and had already faced 17 hearings in the appeal.

Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar questioned whether the petitioner was willing to settle the matter conclusively through a final decision on the appeal, observing that suspension of sentence could be decided without a final relief, but the appeal itself should be concluded expeditiously.

Safdar maintained that despite the passage of over a year, the defence had not received any relief. He highlighted that both Imran and Bushra Bibi were facing issues related to solitary confinement.

He further contended that the IHC could verify prison conditions through the inspector general for prisons and consider relief on humanitarian grounds.

However, Justice Dogar emphasised that the best course would be an early disposal of the main appeal, assuring the defence that the court was mindful of the urgency and would decide the matter promptly.

During the proceedings, the bench was informed about problems in signing a formal power of attorney and accessing medical reports. Addressing senior lawyer Latif Khosa, Justice Dogar questioned how representation was being made without proper documentation.

Safdar responded that he was arguing under powers of attorney and that Khosa had earlier represented Imran in the case. He reiterated his request for suspension of sentence as an interim relief.

On the other hand, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Senior Prosecutor Rafay Maqsood argued that once the appeals were fixed for hearing, a separate plea for suspension of sentence could not be entertained.

In a lighter moment, the chief justice remarked that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister often complained about not receiving a response to his greetings.

“Walaikum Assalam,” he added, asking the counsel to convey this to CM Sohail Afridi.

The hearing was subsequently adjourned.

Imran — imprisoned since Aug 5, 2023, for concealing details of Toshakhana gifts — is serving a 14-year sentence at Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail in the £190m case, also known as the Al-Qadir Trust case.

An accountability court in Islamabad had sentenced Imran and Bushra to 14 and seven years in prison, respectively, on Jan 17, 2025, in the case. Subsequently, both had challenged their convictions before the IHC.

The case alleges that the couple obtained billions of rupees and land worth hundreds of kanals from Bahria Town Ltd to legalise Rs50 billion identified and returned to the country by the United Kingdom during the PTI government.

Bears continued to dominate the trading floor at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Thursday as the KSE-100 plunged by over 3,000 points during intraday trade.

KSE-100 declined by 3,449.98 points or 2.08 per cent to stand at 162,373.89 points at 2:04pm from the previous close of 165,823.87 points.

The market dropped to an intraday low of 160,391.18 points at 11:34am, before regaining some ground to reach above the 162,000-point level after 1pm.

PSX remained under selling pressure for a third consecutive session on Wednesday, as investors stayed wary of the economic outlook and corporate earnings disappointed expectations.

Rising global oil prices amid geopolitical tensions have kept investors cautious, according to analysts.

Oil prices soared more than 7pc to a fresh four-year high today, while global stocks fell after Donald Trump warned the US blockade of Iranian ports could last months and a report said he would be briefed on potential fresh military strikes.

Brent for June delivery surged 7.1pc to $126.41 per barrel in Asian trade, while West Texas Intermediate climbed 3.4pc to $110.31. Both later pared the gains.

Today’s bearish momentum also comes after reports emerged that UAE-based telecom giant Etisalat was said to be in the process of reviewing its exposure to Pakistan’s telecom sector as part of a broader portfolio optimisation exercise.

Trade and industry leaders have flagged concerns over the high cost of doing business, citing expensive bank borrowing following the interest rate hike, alongside elevated electricity and gas tariffs, which have weighed on economic activity.

Additional input from AFP

The commissioning ceremony of the first Hangor-class attack submarine, PNS Hangor, was held in China’s Sanya city, with President Asif Ali Zardari and the naval chief attending the event.

President Zardari, who is on a visit to China, participated as the chief guest, while Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Naveed Ashraf was also present, according to a press release by the Pakistan Navy.

President Zardari described the commissioning of Hangor as a historic milestone in the navy’s modernisation, affirming Pakistan’s resolve to maintain a “robust, balanced and credible defence posture”.

He affirmed that Pakistan was fully capable of defending its sovereignty, protecting its maritime interests and ensuring the security of its economic lifelines.

“The advanced submarine strengthens Pakistan’s maritime defence, protects economic lifelines and reflects strategic partnership with China,” a statement by the Presidency said.

The submarine class, named after the PNS Hangor, is a diesel-electric attack submarine with air-independent propulsion (AIP) technology, which allows it to travel over greater distances before resurfacing.

Meanwhile, Admiral Ashraf highlighted that disruptions at critical maritime choke points increasingly threaten global trade and energy security.

He noted that maintaining a “stable, rule-based maritime order demands technologically advanced naval forces”.

The naval chief observed that Hangor-class submarines — armed with state-of-the-art weapons, advanced sensors and AIP technology — “will be key in preserving maritime order and stability in the region”.

“These submarines will play a pivotal role in deterring aggression and ensuring security of vital Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) across the Arabian Sea and the wider Indian Ocean region,” he was quoted as saying.

Admiral Ashraf said the name Hangor holds a significant place in Pakistan’s history, referring to the 1971 Pakistan-India war, when then-PNS Hangor became the first submarine to sink a warship after World War II, sinking the Indian frigate INS Khukri.

After being decommissioned, the Hangor is now on display at the Pakistan Maritime Museum in Karachi.

“PNS/M HANGOR will carry this illustrious legacy forward, as this is an important milestone for Pakistan Navy that will bolster our maritime defence and modernise our fleet with cutting-edge technology,” the naval chief stated.

In its press release, the navy highlighted that the commissioning of the first Hangor-class submarine marked “another chapter in the time-tested and enriching friendship between Pakistan and China”.

The ceremony was also attended by senior officials from both countries’ navies.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) Field Marshal Asim Munir congratulated the entire nation and the navy on “achieving this historic milestone”, the statement said.

According to Admiral Ashraf, the Pakistan Navy is set to induct a total of eight Hangor-Class submarines.

The navy launched the first of the new submarines in April 2024, while the second, third and fourth were launched on March 15, August 15 and December 17 in 2025, respectively.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) announced on Thursday that admissions for the 2025–2026 academic session have been closed, and students admitted after April 15 will not be registered.

A notification issued by the council said all recognised medical and dental colleges have been directed not to grant admissions after the closing date.

PMDC further clarified that any admission granted beyond the stipulated deadline would constitute a violation of the PMDC Act, 2022, and the relevant regulations governing undergraduate medical and dental education. Consequently, such students will not be issued registration numbers, rendering their admissions invalid.

The directive has been issued with the approval of the competent authority and is binding on all institutions and admitting universities across the country.

The council also urged all stakeholders to ensure strict compliance with the regulations to maintain transparency, merit, and standardisation in medical and dental education.

On April 8, PMDC stated that universities could permit a one-time relaxation of up to three per cent in the MDCAT passing requirement for admissions to medical and dental colleges, aimed at filling vacant seats for the 2025–26 academic session.

The notification stated that the decision had been made solely to fill vacant seats, “ensuring strict merit-based transparency and institutional accountability by the admitting universities, with the admission process for these vacant seats to be monitored accordingly.”

Later, the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) expressed strong disappointment over the council’s decision and called for the immediate withdrawal of the notification.

The association argued that seats remain vacant not due to a shortage of qualified candidates, but because of prohibitive fee structures.

Four-year-old Shahmeer* in Sindh’s Sujawal had been receiving his hifazati teekay on time for pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, typhoid, poliovirus. Every box on his vaccination card was marked complete. Yet, on March 5, he became Pakistan’s first reported polio case of 2026.

Shahmeer showed no visible symptoms — he went out to play as usual, did not complain of joint pain, and showed no signs of paralysis. This is because he had contracted non-paralytic polio, which is a form of the disease that goes unnoticed, sometimes showing up only as a mild flu, but still capable of spreading the virus. The virus in his gut was genetically linked to a positive environmental sample from Hyderabad, lab analysis showed, pointing to ongoing transmission in Sindh.

In many ways, Shahmeer’s case reflects Pakistan’s dilemma today: the country may be close to eradication, but the virus has not been eliminated. It has simply become harder to detect and, therefore, harder to wipe out.

Right now, Pakistan is in what is called “the last mile,” or its most challenging phase, says the prime minister’s focal person, Ayesha Raza Farooq. It has reached this point thrice in the last decade: in 2017, when eight cases were reported, in 2021, when only one case was recorded, and in 2023, when six cases were reported. But each time, progress was derailed by a surge in cases. By the end of 2025, the tally was 31.

Three months into this year, only one case has been reported, and a majority of samples from sewage have been clear of the virus. This has given Unicef Sindh’s team lead Azeem Khawaja the hope that we will reach zero cases by the end of 2026. “Sustaining them there is the big question,” he added. Pakistan must have no cases for at least three years in a row to be declared polio-free. No virus can be detected in humans, the environment, or laboratory samples.

The last mile means Pakistan will have to vaccinate 95 per cent of its children. It aims for over 45 million children each campaign but manages about 43 million every time. That two million or so is the last mile.

During the February and April campaigns this year, 950,000 and 300,000 children were not vaccinated, respectively. Typically, between 800,000 and a million children are missed in each nationwide drive.

Behind these numbers are the doors that never open, the children who are not home, and the parents who keep turning polio workers away.

Familiarity that coexists with suspicion

At seven o’clock on a December morning, Sindhi Para in Karachi’s Dalmia, UC-7 of Gulshan Town, had barely risen for the day. Deep in the coil of the basti’s narrow alleys, mothers speed-walked to school, their children straggling behind. Not much else was stirring, except for the sweeper’s long-handled broom.

A medical centre sat at the edge of the alley leading to Sindhi Para, where dozens of women were gathered under an old tree. Its entrance was littered with run-down furniture yet to be discarded. Inside, the buzzing of a pedestal fan greeted visitors before the fading paint on the walls.

The women, most of them clad in burqas and joggers, queued in the courtyard. Their eyes darted from their phone screens to the office, where their supervisor sat. Finally, his voice rang loud. Names were called, data sheets were handed over, and an announcement was made: “What is our goal? Not a single child is to be missed.” The polio teams fanned out.

Before she led her team into the assigned neighbourhood, Samina adjusted the strap of her blue vaccine carrier box and stepped into the first house on her list. A toddler ran past her. “Ali hasn’t gone to school yet?” she asked. His mother laughed and called him back. As soon as he entered, Bilqis squeezed the two precious drops into the child’s open maw and dragged a pen across his cuticle. Parmeela chalked up cryptic symbols at the gate: EPI St. 4, H. 9. 1/1 + 0 T+2, AFP 0, ZD 0 ←. Before leaving, Samina double-checked: “Any newborns? Any visiting children? Any cases of paralysis?”

Then they inched forward to the next gate.

“Arey Samina, I was only wondering when you will come over,” an elderly woman at the door said. “Come on in, ladies.” Samina led the way in, and for the next 20 minutes, the women chatted over a cup of tea, swiftly switching from Urdu to Sindhi. The conversation jumped from the new family that recently moved upstairs from Balochistan’s Hub to the upcoming wedding, and inflation. Before they said goodbye, the lady health workers took turns to use the bathroom, Samina refilled her water bottle as Bilqis squeezed the dropper over the open mouth of the newest member of the family.

Parmeela herded the women upstairs to meet the newcomers. A woman, with a toddler cradled on her hip, answered the door. As Samina greeted them, Parmeela and Bilqis’ eyebrows shot up. “We didn’t know you could speak Balochi that well,” they later said to tease her.

“When you have been meandering these streets for years, it is easy to know everyone and for everyone to know you,” Samina explained. “This way, vaccinations become easier … and it also keeps up to date with what is happening in the neighbourhood.”

The familiarity, however, coexisted with suspicion. A woman once spat on Parmeela and screamed that she was poisoning her children. A man pulled a gun on Samina each time she came to his door. In some homes, fathers would turn Bilquis away but the mothers would sneak the children out for the drops when the men were not home. They would tell the women not to mark the child’s finger and just note the tally on their official sheet.

The women blamed rumours for this resistance: that the “vaccine causes infertility”, that it is “un-Islamic”, that it is “aimed at reducing the population of a particular ethnicity”.

For a period, police accompanied the teams. But that created even more scepticism and fear, said Parmeela. So now, a police van was parked a short distance from teams at all times, but the men were rarely ever involved. The instruction was to persist. If persuasion failed, report the refusal; if tensions escalated, involve the in-charge or the police.

Ninety-eight per cent of refusals come from 30 districts across Pakistan, according to National Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator Anwarul Haq. These include areas with a history of high polio incidence (Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and south Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

During the first campaign of 2026, Karachi alone reported 58pc of refusals, the largest share.

“People often ask, ‘Why just polio?’” Ayesha Raza said. “Why is this a priority when children are dying from other diseases?” People are simply frustrated, and so when teams knock on their doors, it agitates them. Why does the government care about polio but not water in their taps? Or treatment for illnesses they and their children actually have? Or other necessities?

Some families used this as a bargaining chip. We will only vaccinate our child if we are provided soap, they would tell the health workers. Others demanded a strip of paracetamol, a better road.

“Simply, there is a lack of trust in our health systems,” explained Unicef’s Azeem Khawaja. “Instead of strengthening the health system, we have invested in outreach, on which 70pc of the immunisation coverage is dependent. Shut down outreach, and you will see resistance multiply.” And this was because the healthcare system was dependent on the choice of the people. “When we take the polio vaccine to every door, it builds the expectation that all the other health services would also be provided at the doorstep. All of this determines the health-seeking behaviour of a community.

“Right now, we are stuck in a vicious cycle that needs to be broken,” Khawaja added.

In recent years, community mobilisers have been tasked with softening resistance. They engage big names from the community (social media influencers, politicians, clerics) to raise awareness and help negotiate difficult refusals. One such instance was witnessed by Dawn.

On a Saturday afternoon, a three-woman team at the Al-Rashid Nomad settlement in Karachi’s Gujro was on a hunt. They were in search of a woman who had a habit of disappearing with her children during every campaign, only to return once they left. When the team approached her makeshift camp on an empty plot allotted to the nomadic community visiting from other parts of Sindh, the situation escalated. Both she and the neighbours were being difficult.

“My daughter has a fever … I don’t want to administer polio drops to her,” one of the men said. Sakina Bibi, the senior-most polio worker, described how swelling in children’s legs was sometimes blamed on the vaccine and resulted in resistance, even though it was linked to heat and environmental conditions.

The missing woman’s camp, on the other hand, was empty as usual, but one of the locals recalled seeing her earlier in the day. When the team finally found her, the arguments grew louder and the crowd bigger. The commotion drew the attention of a policeman at a short distance, whose hands reached for his weapon. Ultimately, an influencer, the caretaker of the settlement, was called in. “The vaccine will not do any harm to your child … even my children have a finger marking,” he told the woman in Sindhi. Ten minutes later, the drops were administered.

In Karachi, Gujro is also known as a hotspot, hence, it is key to countering refusals. “Gujro is Karachi’s gateway. People come here from all parts of the country in search of jobs, and therefore we have a lot of population movement here,” explained Syed Qaim Akbar Nimai, coordinator of the Emergency Response Unit for Gujro. About 70pc to 80pc of the population here came from conflict-ridden areas such as Waziristan and other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where vaccine administration was difficult.

“This is the biggest challenge we have, and Gujro is super high risk for this very reason: we can’t relax for a moment here because it’s a continuous cycle,” Nimai added. “If you go to the bus terminals, you will see how many people are coming to us every day, and they’re all unvaccinated.”

Tip of the iceberg and beyond

But even if they were vaccinated, there is contaminated drinking water and open sewers.

In Gujro, barefoot children played around uncovered nullahs, their filth overflowing into the streets littered with garbage. And this contributed to the spread of polio. Positive environmental samples meant the virus was in circulation; someone was excreting the virus into the sewage system, whether a child or an adult. Look at it this way: children play outside, they come in contact with the virus, they go home and eat without washing their hands, the virus enters the gut. “This continues and sometimes it takes months before a diseased person appears in the community,” said Dr Ali Faisal, an associate professor at Aga Khan University, who specialises in paediatric infectious disease.

“In a city like Karachi where the population is dense and where WASH-related problems persist, positive environmental samples mean something big is going to happen because we are unable to see the cases,” he pointed out, adding that the transmission of polio was being underestimated because the virus was associated with paralysis. But paralysis was just the tip of the iceberg.

Strong environmental surveillance means detecting virus circulation before cases appear, and persistent sewage samples mean the virus still has human hosts, explained Professor Fatima Mir, also a paediatric infectious disease specialist at AKU. These hosts may be immune but they may also be vulnerable (missed children, migrant populations, people in areas with poor quality campaigns or underserved areas). So paralytic cases comprised only a small proportion of infections and reported cases may lag behind environmental detection due to surveillance weaknesses or actual immunity.

In Pakistan, the surveillance mechanism is two-pronged; environmental samples are collected from 127 drainage sites in 88 districts for testing at a WHO-credited laboratory in Islamabad. This is supported by 12,000 community-based surveillance facilities.

When the virus enters a child’s gut, samples should ideally be collected within 14 days, as the probability of detecting the virus is high in this window. Once this timeframe passes, samples of neighbours, friends and siblings are also taken up until 60 days, Dr Khawaja said.

Low case numbers, therefore, do not necessarily signal safety. They may instead reflect immunity levels that prevent visible disease, while transmission continues. “This is not a scientific failure,” Dr Mir said. “It is a failure of immunisation systems and trust.”

At the centre of this failure are children who never enter the system at all.

In polio programme language, they are referred to as zero-dose—children who have not received even a single dose of the vaccine, neither through routine immunisation nor supplementary campaigns. But on the ground, they are simply the ones who are missed: the child who were not home when the team arrived; the child whose parents refused; the child living in a settlement that exists beyond the state’s regular reach.

When such children contract the virus, it is not surprising. It is expected. “These are the children the virus finds,” Dr Mir explained. “Because they are completely unprotected.”

Pakistan’s immunisation challenge, she stressed, was not limited to polio campaigns. While door-to-door drives repeatedly boost immunity, routine vaccination—the backbone of any disease prevention system—remains uneven. Each month, a new group of children is born and enters the population, and when routine coverage is inconsistent, pockets of under-immunised children continue to build. This creates a revolving door of vulnerability.

“You may be doing campaigns again and again,” she said, “but if routine immunisation is weak, you are always playing catch-up.”

The gaps are not evenly distributed, instead, they are concentrated in urban slums, such as the Al-Rashid Nomad settlement, in mobile and migrant populations such as the highlanders of KP who come down to the plains in winter, in underserved rural districts such as katcha areas, and in areas where access is shaped by insecurity (North and South Waziristan, Bannu, Kurram and districts in south KP).

In these regions, even a small lapse in coverage is enough to sustain the transmission of the virus. And over time, these missed children accumulate until the system is once again confronted with the same question: if the vaccine exists, why are they still being missed?

“It’s not that we don’t know how to stop polio,” Dr Mir said. “It’s that we haven’t been able to do it everywhere, consistently.”

The consistency experts talk about is very much dependent on 400,000 and more frontline workers who are trekking the length and breadth of Pakistan. In the words of Ayesha Raza, the polio programme and its success depends on them. However, there seems to be little to keep them motivated.

Those who walk

After the recent pay cut, frontline workers in Karachi are now paid Rs12,000 for an eight-day campaign, while supervisors receive around Rs20,000. For many, this is their only source of income and it is barely enough. “I am not just earning for myself,” said Parmeela, a supervisor and the sole earner of her family. “I have my mother, and my dead brother’s son.” Samina echoed the same strain. When her husband lost his job during Covid-19, the responsibility of running the household fell entirely on her. “This Rs12,000 does not even include transport,” she said.

Some workers spend up to Rs500 a day just getting to and from their assigned areas. Many, like Samina and Parmeela, walk.

The story does not shift much across the country. In Punjab, workers are paid the same amount for eight days. In Bannu, payments have dropped from over Rs10,000 to Rs8,200 for four to five days of work, plus training. In Quetta, a community health worker who once earned Rs32,000 now receives Rs12,000, often weeks after the campaign ends. “Our government is doing so much,” said Ayesha, a polio worker in Punjab. “Is it not our right that we get a scooty at least? Officers get medals because of us.”

Ayesha contracted polio herself when she was two.

“At that time, my parents did not even know what it was,” she recalled. She was bedridden for months before receiving treatment and a prosthetic shoe. As she grew older, finding a marriage proposal became difficult. She eventually married and, after nine years of waiting, had a daughter. “I have polio, but I will not let anyone else go through the same pain,” she said. “I don’t want my daughter or any child to live the life I have lived.”

For over a decade now, she has been part of the very campaigns that could have prevented her condition. Her routine mirrors that of thousands of others across the country. The day begins early: assembling at a designated centre, collecting vaccine carriers packed with ice to maintain temperatures between two and eight degrees Celsius, receiving microplans and maps. Then, hours of walking door to door and street to street marking fingers, recording data, persuading families, returning to missed households, and finally submitting tally sheets by evening.

The cold chain must be preserved. The vials must remain shaded. Every dose must be accounted for. And still, the work does not end with logistics.

When faced with refusals early in her career, Ayesha would point to herself. She would ask parents why two drops felt more dangerous than a lifetime of disability. “Polio drops have been given in Pakistan since 1988,” she would tell them. “Has the population reduced?”

Despite living just a 10-minute drive away from her assigned area in Tajpura, she walks most of the distance. She often falls. Winters bring pain and stiffness. There is no transport, and no medical facility for workers with disabilities. Yet she continues.

Officials acknowledge the strain. Ayesha Raza Farooq, the prime minister’s focal person, said the programme had to “rethink” its operations due to funding constraints.

“Earlier, workers were engaged for longer periods and paid per day,” she explained. “We reduced the number of working days to optimise campaigns without compromising quality.” The result, however, has been a direct cut in earnings.

“Yes, it has impacted everything to a certain degree,” she admitted, adding that the programme was trying to compensate with other benefits. On the ground, workers say they have yet to materialise.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu, the challenges extend beyond pay. Javeria Gul has been working as a vaccinator for over 13 years. She holds a master’s degree—one she says has “gathered dust” because she could never find stable employment. “I am in my 40s, unmarried, and people say I am a burden on my parents,” she said. “So I do this work to survive.”

Each campaign begins at a mission hospital, where teams gather before being deployed, often with security escorts. Bannu has seen frequent militant attacks. “Even though security is provided, everyone is scared,” she said. She remembers a man in Basti Muhallah who pulled out a gun and warned the team never to return. In such cases, religious leaders are brought in to negotiate. A week after a major attack in the area, Javeria and her team continued vaccinating children for four consecutive days. “Fear is there,” she said. “But so is the work.”

In Quetta’s Shahbaz Town, Anita, a widow and a schoolteacher, has been part of campaigns for over five years. She describes two kinds of refusals. “The chronic ones refuse every time,” she said. “The silent ones avoid us. They don’t argue; they just don’t bring the child.” Women, she added, often want to vaccinate but are held back by male family members. “Men get angry quickly,” she said. “Sometimes we skip the finger marking and just note it on the tally sheet.”

The area is constantly shifting—families arrive for work and leave within a few years, making it harder to build trust.

During the last campaign, a citywide strike forced Anita to walk nearly an hour just to reach her centre. “We are not given food or transport,” she said. “But we still go.”

In Sindhi Para, as the winter sun begins to dip, Samina pauses briefly for a namaz break inside a house. A message arrives on her phone, listing the codes of missed households. She adjusts her dupatta and steps back into the lane. There are still doors left to knock.

‘Roadmap to Zero’

From February 2 to 8 this year, Pakistan ran its first nationwide polio campaign for 2026, vaccinating over 44.3 million children under the age of five. Across the border, Afghanistan launched a similar campaign in the same week. It was not a coincidence. It was by design.

Eradication efforts in both countries are synchronised, timelines aligned, teams mobilised in tandem, and vaccination drives rolled out simultaneously on either side of the Durand Line. The reasoning is simple: the virus does not recognise borders, and neither can the response.

Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries in the world where the wild poliovirus is endemic. Epidemiologically, they are treated as a single bloc, not only because of geography, but because of people.

“There is constant movement between the two countries,” explained Dr Israarul Haq, spokesperson for the NEOC. “Families live on both sides, tribes span across borders, and people cross frequently for economic and social reasons. If people are moving, the virus is moving.” This movement sits at the centre of both the problem, and the strategy.

Coordination between the two countries has intensified. Emergency Operations Centres on both sides maintain dedicated desks for cross-border collaboration, aligning campaign schedules, sharing surveillance data, and jointly planning interventions in high-risk zones, particularly along the belt of more than 17 union councils stretching from Chitral in the north to Chagai in Balochistan.

“If we miss a child here, they may be vaccinated there, and vice versa,” Dr Haq said.

In 2025 alone, Pakistan conducted three national campaigns in coordination with Afghanistan. The process is supported by cross-border forums and the Technical Advisory Group (TAG), an independent body that guides polio eradication strategies in both countries. Beyond synchronisation, surveillance data is also shared. Every detected virus, whether from a child or an environmental sample, undergoes genetic sequencing, allowing health authorities to trace its origin.

“If a virus detected in Pakistan is linked to a strain circulating in Afghanistan, we highlight that,” Dr Haq explained. “And they do the same with us.”

The coordination, officials say, extends beyond formal systems. Technical teams remain in constant communication, adapting strategies in real time. At the community level, religious leaders, tribal elders, and influencers are engaged on both sides to counter refusals and build acceptance. But even with synchronised campaigns, the scale of movement presents a persistent challenge.

Pakistan’s programme classifies mobile and migrant populations as high-risk — people travelling for seasonal work, displacement, or economic survival. These populations are mapped, tracked, and targeted, but they remain difficult to fully reach. To bridge this gap, transit vaccination has been expanded. Teams are deployed at bus terminals, highways, railway stations, and border crossings, vaccinating children on the move.

In 2025, more than 14 million children were reached through these transit points, the PM’s focal person said. Yet, the limitations are clear.

“Transit vaccination is a complementary strategy,” said Ayesha Raza Farooq. “It cannot replace door-to-door campaigns. Not every vehicle stops. Not every child can be reached this way.”

And this is where synchronisation becomes critical. If a child slips through one campaign, the hope is that they will be vaccinated in another — across a district, a province, or a border. Still, the imbalance remains: movement is continuous; vaccination is periodic.

Despite years of progress, transmission has not been eliminated.

“We were very close to eradication in 2018 … again in 2021,” Ayesha recalled. “But these programmes require relentless effort. Even a small lapse can set us back.”

She pointed to two key reasons: complacency and gaps in essential immunisation. “Many of the children who test positive are zero-dose,” she said. These are children who have not received even a single routine vaccine. “For them, campaigns have to be longer and more consistent.”

And then there are the conditions that allow the virus to thrive.

Poor sanitation, unsafe water, and overcrowded urban settings continue to facilitate transmission. In cities like Karachi, where sewage and drinking water often intersect, the virus moves quietly, circulating in the environment long before it appears as a case.

Environmental surveillance reflects this. In Karachi, a significant proportion of sewage samples continue to test positive—a sign that the virus is still being excreted, still finding hosts, still moving.

The geography of transmission has narrowed, but it has not disappeared. In 2025, most cases were concentrated in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, particularly in districts bordering Afghanistan. Karachi remains a key reservoir, shaped by high population density, migration, and persistent refusals. In Punjab, mobility continues to complicate coverage, with virus strains often linked to other regions.

“Circulation has now been pushed back to a few zones,” said National EOC Coordinator Muhammad Anwarul Haq. “But until it is completely eliminated, the risk remains.” And that is the paradox of the last mile: the closer eradication comes, the harder it becomes to sustain.

Low case numbers create the illusion of control. The virus becomes invisible. Public urgency fades. But in small pockets — hard-to-reach districts, underserved communities, mobile populations — transmission continues, quietly rebuilding.

“We cannot rely on force,” Ayesha said. “You may succeed once, but eradication requires repetition, trust, and consistency.” This marks a shift in strategy from enforcement to persuasion, from access to acceptance. At its core, the goal remains unchanged: to interrupt transmission completely.

Under what officials describe as the “Roadmap to Zero”, Pakistan aims to eliminate both human cases and environmental circulation of the virus. But eradication is not defined by a single year of success.

Pakistan has come close before. Now, with transmission largely contained, cross-border coordination strengthened, and strategies evolving, it stands once again at a familiar threshold. The goal is simple. Staying there is the real challenge.

*Name hidden to protect identity

PESHAWAR: Police arrested two armed suspects, one in an injured condition, after a patrolling party came under fire in the Tor Dhand area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Karak district.

The district police officer’s (DPO) spokesman, Shaukatullah, said that the attack took place within the limits of the City police station, while the police party was on routine patrol duty.

“When the cops signalled two suspects travelling on a motorcycle to stop, they instead opened fire in a bid to escape,” he said.

According to the spokesperson, the law enforcers returned the attack, triggering a gun battle.

The official said that DPO Imran Khan also dispatched reinforcements when he learned about the attack on the police party.

“When the exchange of fire stopped, police launched a search and clearance operation and captured two suspects, one in injured condition, and disarmed them,” he said.

He added that the police seized arms and ammunition from them and took the injured suspect to a nearby hospital.

The DPO, along with Superintendent of Police (SP) Investigation Kamal Hussain and Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Yousaf Khan, also reached the scene. They praised the policemen for their bravery and “result-oriented actions” against the suspects, the spokesperson added.

Despite record militant deaths, Pakistan saw a sharp escalation in militant violence in 2025, with terrorist attacks rising by 34 per cent and terrorism-related fatalities increasing by 21 per cent year on year, according to a report released by the Islamabad-based Pak Institute for Peace Studies.

Over the last few months, several areas of KP, including Bannu, Peshawar, Karak, Lakki Marwat and Bajaur, have witnessed a series of terrorist attacks on police personnel.

Security forces killed 22 terrorists in a joint intelligence-based operation (IBO) in KP’s Khyber District last week.

Earlier this month, at least five policemen, including an officer, were injured in an explosion in the Shahbazkhel town in Lakki Marwat.

Last month, security forces killed 13 terrorists in five separate operations across KP. These operations came after a lieutenant colonel and a sepoy were martyred in a suicide attack during an IBO in Bannu.

ISLAMABAD: After an alleged A-level paper leak, the Inter-Board of Coordination Commission (IBCC) on Wednesday decided to seek report from Cambridge as parents and students once again raised questions about the transparency of the exam system.

“Many A-level students in Pakistan, who appeared for Mathematics (9709) exam, feel cheated. The question paper had been reportedly leaked. A surprisingly prestigious institution like Cambridge can’t maintain exam integrity,” a father of a student posted on social media.

Meanwhile, a teacher of an Islamabad-based private school, in her consoling message to her hardworking students, wrote in parents groups: “I can’t express how infuriated I am right now. I’m at a loss for my hardworking students. No amount of words can console me at the moment either. My heart just broke into a million pieces. I kept telling myself this cannot be true. The entire paper being leaked is just utterly ridiculous. But here we are. It has happened,” she said.

Taking notice of this alleged paper leak, Executive Director IBCC Dr Ghulam Ali Mallah decided to seek a report from Cambridge.

Speaking to Dawn, he said: “ Today, we saw complaints of students and parents on social media about an alleged paper leak. Therefore, we decided to write a letter on Thursday to Cambridge to get their point of view on this issue. Let me assure you, we will take every possible step for our students,” he said.

Commenting on the issue, a Cambridge spokesperson said: “We are aware of news about a reported leak of a question paper. We investigate such reports thoroughly and will provide more information to centres, if required, during or after the end of timetabled exams for the June 2026 series.”

It is relevant to note here that last year, there was uproar amongst students and parents for the alleged leakage of five papers. Parents had stated that question papers were available online against payment hours before the start of exams, putting the future of brilliant students at stake and giving undue favour to those who bought.

The issue was taken up by the National Assembly Standing Committee, which had formed a sub-committee that probed the matter in detail and stated that several papers were leaked. Cambridge, in its statement last year, acknowledged “partial leakage of three papers.”

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2026

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for King Charles to “return” the prized Koh-i-Noor diamond, which the British Empire took from the Indian subcontinent in the 1800s, on the third day of the monarch’s state visit on Wednesday.

Before greeting Charles and Queen Camilla at a 9/11 memorial event, Mamdani was asked what he would discuss with the king if he had the chance.

“If I was to speak to the king, separately from that, I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond,” the leftist mayor said, adding that his focus would be honoring those killed in the terror attacks.

It’s unclear whether Mamdani followed through and brought up the contentious subject with Charles when the two met.

The monarch was seen laughing with Mamdani and having a brief conversation after they shook hands.

Housed in the Tower of London, the massive 106 carat stone is the star of Britain’s crown jewels, adorning the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

The ownership of the jewel has been contested over the centuries, passing through the hands of Mughal emperors, Iranian shahs and Sikh maharajas before the Kingdom of Punjab gave it to Queen Victoria in 1849 as part of a peace treaty.

India has repeatedly and unsuccessfully sought the return of the priceless jewel.

While there is little doubt it was mined in India, its history thereafter is a mixture of myth and fact, with several countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan also laying claim to the gem.

A politician from the anti-immigration Reform UK party was quick to slam the comments as an “insult to our King.” “This beautiful diamond is currently on display in the Tower of London,” the party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said in an X post. “That is where it will stay”.