Sharif's medical condition life-threatening, says Maryam Nawaz

Pakistan's deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif's medical condition is "life-threatening" and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo has suffered four angina attacks last week, his daughter Maryam Nawaz said on Tuesday. Nawaz Sharif, 69, is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case at the Kot Lakhpat Jail since December 2018. Earlier, Pakistan's Islamabad High Court has rejected the bail plea on medical grounds of Sharif. The Islamabad High Court had said in its decision in the capital that Sharif could not be given bail on health grounds as he was already being treated at a hospital. "We're surely disappointed by this decision," Sharif's aide, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, told reporters, adding that a government medical board had called for urgent treatment. But he said his party would respect the court decision. "We have always respected court decisions," he said. "We will take all necessary legal recourse."

Maryam criticised the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government for mistreatment of the three-time elected premier, following her visit to the jail to meet her father, Dawn newspaper reported.

"There is no treatment offered to him (Sharif) even when he is taken to and kept in the hospital for days. He says he doesn't want to be in the hospital as an excuse or escape or just for the sake of it," she tweeted.

"MNS (Mian Nawaz Sharif) has been a three-time Prime Minister and the insensitivity and callousness regarding his health on part of the government is shocking. My family and I are extremely concerned given the grave risk to his health. His condition is life-threatening," she said.

Maryam said during her meeting with Sharif, "he had an episode of angina and asked for his nitrate spray. Then he divulged that he has had similar attacks four times last week".

"He reiterated that he will neither report nor complain," she said.

"It's a medical fact that every episode of angina worsens the heart disease and can damage the heart irreversibly. Who will I blame or who will be responsible if anything happens to him God forbid? The callousness, I repeat, is shocking," she said.

Maryam's comments came as the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a plea moved on Sharif's behalf for early hearing of his appeal against last month's Islamabad High Court order of turning down his bail petition on medical grounds, the report said.

On February 15, Sharif was shifted to a hospital on the request of his personal physician to the government. It was the second time in February that he was shifted to a hospital from the prison.

The three-time former prime minister was dismissed from office in July 2017 over corruption allegations, with the country's top court ordering the anti-corruption watchdog to launch proceedings against him and his family.

Sharif and his children - two sons and a daughter - were charged with three counts of corruption during his two stints in power in the 1990s.