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A Pakistani court has sentenced opposition leader Imran Khan to three years in jail over corruption allegations, threatening to remove the country’s popular former prime minister from politics ahead of national elections due later this year.

A large contingent of police arrested Khan at his Lahore home and took him to jail shortly after the verdict by an Islamabad lower court on Saturday, which found him guilty of illegally profiting from the sale of gifts that he received while in office from 2018 to 2022.

It is the second time in less than three months that Pakistani authorities have arrested Khan, who has repeatedly clashed verbally not only with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government but the country’s powerful military.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party decried the conviction and arrest as a politically motivated attempt to prevent him from contesting Pakistan’s general elections, which are expected in October or November. 

They alleged that Khan is being targeted because of his criticism of the army, which controls much of the country’s politics from behind the scenes.

The decision was “reached at haste to keep [Khan] out of [the] electoral race,” the PTI said. It added that Khan, who is facing a series of other cases ranging from graft to terrorism allegations, has appealed against the judgment in the Islamabad High Court and Supreme Court.

Analysts said that the latest action against Khan threatens to escalate Pakistan’s political tensions ahead of the elections.

They argue that Khan, who was removed from office in a no-confidence vote last year, probably remains the country’s most popular politician and would be a favourite to become prime minister again if allowed to run.

“We have seen such instances in the past against politicians and it hasn’t worked,” Huma Baqai, a Karachi-based analyst, said. “If anything, a steroid has been injected today into Imran Khan’s politics. His support will only grow. There are strong grounds to challenge his arrest in higher courts.”

Khan’s previous arrest in May, over allegations that he engaged in a corrupt land deal, triggered furious protests around the country in which several people were killed and a number of military installations were vandalised.

Though Khan was soon granted bail, authorities went on to arrest thousands of his supporters while many senior PTI leaders quit the party under pressure in a crackdown analysts said was driven by the military.

Khan decried it “undeclared martial law”, telling the Financial Times in June that the authorities “will only hold elections when they think that my party is crushed”.

Sharif, whose government has struggled with a painful economic crisis, is expected to step down in the coming days and hand over power to a caretaker government ahead of the polls.

Last Sunday, a suicide bombing killed more than 60 people at a rally held by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) party, a hardline Sunni Muslim group that is part of Sharif’s ruling coalition. A local ISIS offshoot claimed responsibility for the attack.