Khan had planned to lock down Pakistans capital before supreme court agreed to launch inquiry into corruption claims
Imran Khan has abandoned plans to bring Islamabad to a standstill after Pakistans highest court agreed to his petition to launch an inquiry into corruption allegations against the prime minister.
Khan, the leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), had vowed to lock down Pakistans capital on Wednesday as part of his campaign against Nawaz Sharif after the leaking of the Panama Papers.
He says the prime minister must explain how his children became owners or trustees of offshore companies that own expensive London property.
With thousands of Khans supporters bearing down on the capital on Tuesday, the supreme court offered a way out of the crisis, saying the PTI and the governing Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) had until Thursday to agree terms of reference for the judge-led inquiry or the court would decide them.
Sharif and his children deny any wrongdoing, but Khan has suggested that the familys offshore companies may have been used to hide ill-gotten wealth or avoid tax.
The imposing supreme court building was surrounded by heavy security for a hearing that attracted leading politicians from the government and the opposition.
Islamabad had been braced for the arrival of thousands of Khans supporters, in a repeat of the PTIs 2014 street protests that lasted four months.
Fearing violent confrontations in the heart of the capital, the government had taken extraordinary steps to head off the protests, including placing shipping containers across some of the access roads into Islamabad and using colonial-era legislation to ban gatherings of more than four people in Punjab, Pakistans largest province.