Former international cricket star Imran Khan had vowed to captain the country for a second time after being ousted as prime minister last year, but his prospects have been bleak after he was convicted of corruption on Saturday.
He was being taken into custody to start a three-year prison sentence less than an hour after he was declared guilty by an Islamabad judge, ahead of mid-November elections.
Khan was expecting punishment – he faces more than 200 legal cases which he argues were politically motivated and designed to prevent him from standing up against the fragile coalition government.
The charismatic 70-year-old remains hugely popular – last month his first TikTok video was viewed more than 135 million times in the first 36 hours – but the survival of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party under his leadership remains unclear. ,
Much of their senior leadership has also been gunned down, or have left the party following major crackdowns by the ruling establishment, substantially reducing their street power.
Since he was ousted from power in a vote of no confidence in April 2022, Khan has waged a risky and unprecedented campaign of defiance against the military, which he accuses of hard-firing his party.
After his arrest and brief detention in the same case in May, his anger spilled into the streets, leading to three days of sometimes violent protests.
He is still recovering from an assassination attempt in November in which he was shot in the leg – an attack he blamed on current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a senior military officer.
The political drama has been played out against the backdrop of an economic downturn and dramatically increasing terrorist attacks, ahead of general elections later in October.