Prisoner number 804: the plot to erase Imran Khan

It’s one thing to remove a PM from office, as happened to the former cricketer in 2022. But it’s another thing to try to eradicate the most famous person in Pakistan’s historyThis article originally appeared in , a new magazine of politics, culture and artJust so we’re clear, the following is a fact. Not opinion, not a point of view, not a hot take. Fact. There is no Pakistani – male, female, dead, alive, real, imagined – as famous as Imran Khan. Every turn in a multifarious public life has abounded in fame, first as a cricket legend, then as a beloved philanthropist who built a cancer hospital for the poor, latterly as a maverick politician who swept to power promising reform, and now, as the sole occupant of a cell in Pakistan’s most notorious jail. So famous he’s been the subject of two death hoaxes – most recently in November, when he went unseen for so long that many concluded he had died.There have been others with greater accomplishments. There may come others in the future. But in almost 79 years of Pakistan, in the pure currency of fame, of being known and recognised, of being talked about, of being the one Pakistani everyone can name, there is nobody beyond Imran. (He is almost universally known by his first name alone.) It holds even now, two years into the state’s attempts to erase him from public life. In that time, they’ve barred TV channels from saying his name on air and stopped newspapers from publishing his picture; they’ve even scrubbed him from the footage of his greatest sporting triumph.