By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: The family of a 25-year-old businessman whose gunshot death last month has roiled this city’s police department went to court Monday, seeking to block a provincial judicial commission formed to review the stalled murder investigation.
Lawyers for the family of Mir Raza Ali filed an emergency petition with the Sindh High Court hours after the province formally empanelled the judicial commission, defying objections the family had raised since the plan was first floated. The filing sets up a legal confrontation over how — and by whom — one of Karachi’s most closely watched death investigations will be resolved.
Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court tapped Justice Omar Sial to lead the commission, according to judicial correspondence. But Ali’s relatives want no part of it. Their petition, filed through attorney Jibran Nasir, asks the court to scrap the commission entirely and instead order creation of a joint investigation team drawing on Pakistan’s police, paramilitary and intelligence services.
A two-judge bench led by Justice Adnanul Karim Memon took up the matter on Monday afternoon, issuing notices to 19 respondents — including the provincial government, the police hierarchy and federal defence officials — and scheduling a full hearing for August 31. In the meantime, the judges ordered police to hold off on filing their final investigative report while the petition is pending.
“We learned from the media that the Sindh government was forming a judicial commission,” Nasir told the court, arguing that empanelling a commission at this stage, before police had reached any conclusions, threatened to derail the case.
Outside the courtroom, Nasir said the judges had also demanded an accounting from police of what he described as negligence in handling the investigation.
A Family’s Demand for Answers
The petition is remarkable for its scope. It does not merely object to the commission’s formation — it lays out, in granular detail, what the family believes went wrong in the weeks after Ali’s body was discovered and what should happen next.
Central to their case is a request that any new investigative body examine whether the killing involved extortion, ransom, a business dispute or organized criminal activity, and whether it meets the threshold for prosecution under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism statute. The family also wants investigators to scrutinize the conduct of specific police officials, including a deputy inspector general and a deputy superintendent, both named as respondents, to determine whether their handling of the case rose to the level of criminal misconduct under provisions of the penal code governing evidence tampering and dereliction of duty.
Beyond the criminal inquiry, the petition asks the court to order a separate departmental investigation into the original inquiry team and to immediately suspend five named officers pending that review — a request aimed, the filing states, at preserving the integrity of what comes next.
The family argues a judicial commission is simply the wrong tool for the job. Commissions, the petition contends, lack the authority to conduct criminal investigations or file charges, and stand accused in the filing of functioning as a way to offload institutional failure onto the judiciary rather than solve the underlying crime.
The petition is sharply critical of the original investigation, alleging investigators moved prematurely toward a theory of suicide, never took statements from Ali’s immediate family, mishandled physical and digital evidence, failed to secure CCTV footage and mishandled the dead man’s smartwatch — lapses the family says were only exposed once a revised medical opinion ruled out suicide altogether.
The Government’s Case
Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab offered the administration’s account of events at a press conference on Monday, walking reporters through the sequence that led to the commission’s formation and pledging results within 30 days.
Wahab said the process began August 19, when the family’s lawyer sent Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah a lengthy letter — 20 to 21 pages, by Wahab’s account — cataloging complaints against the police leadership, the home minister and, implicitly, the chief minister’s own oversight of the case. “In the letter, the lawyer sahib said that police had failed completely,” Wahab said, recounting the letter’s contents. “He also raised similar doubts against the chief minister; however, he mentioned that because you are the head of the province, we expect that justice will be delivered.”
The letter prompted a meeting two days later among the chief minister, the provincial police chief, the chief secretary and Wahab himself. “After the meeting, a consensus was reached that the topmost priority of the government is to satisfy the deceased’s family,” Wahab said. With the investigative team already replaced once and doubts persisting about police leadership more broadly, Wahab said the chief minister concluded a judicial inquiry was the only avenue left, since he could not investigate the case personally. The cabinet signed off, and the province wrote to the high court’s chief justice on August 22.
Wahab outlined the commission’s mandate: to establish the facts surrounding Ali’s death, assess whether the investigation has proceeded lawfully and impartially, determine whether any police or medico-legal officer engaged in negligence, misconduct or evidence tampering, and recommend further forensic or legal action. Sindh’s home secretary will serve as the commission’s secretary.
Wahab was emphatic that the commission would not supplant the police investigation itself. “The police will submit its report, too, under Section 173,” he said, referring to the Criminal Procedure Code provision governing final investigative reports.
He also updated reporters on the forensic effort, saying Ali’s phone, smartwatch and SIM card had been hand-delivered to the Punjab Forensic Sciences Agency and that a report was expected soon. Police, he said, remain in contact with Apple and Meta over data requests, having already obtained the judicial order the companies required before releasing information.
Wahab’s message to the family carried a note of frustration. He said the government had granted every request the family’s counsel had made — a preferred investigating officer, forensic agency involvement, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency’s participation — only to face renewed objections each time. “If they are going to reject it again, this process will never end,” he said, appealing to the family to trust the government’s intentions. “If the government or the police were ill-intentioned, then why would they form a judicial commission?”
A Case Marked by Reversals
Ali, a graduate of the Institute of Business Administration, was found dead July 29 in bushes in the Gulistan-i-Jauhar neighborhood, a day after being reported missing. From the outset, his family insisted he had been abducted, tortured and killed; police initially pursued suicide as the leading theory.
That theory collapsed after an exhumation and second autopsy — ordered following a dispute between the Karachi police surgeon and investigators over the original medico-legal findings — revealed multiple injuries and a gunshot wound to the back, prompting police to add murder to the case’s charges.
The path to that second autopsy was itself contentious. A judicial magistrate authorized the exhumation August 6, but the medical board initially convened to conduct it was abruptly reconstituted overnight by Sindh’s health department, prompting the family to reject the new panel and forcing a delay. Nasir accused authorities at the time of attempting to obscure the facts. The province ultimately reinstated the original board, and the exhumation proceeded August 8.
The investigation itself has changed hands repeatedly. A day after the exhumation, Sindh’s police leadership reshuffled the investigating team and transferred the case from Ferozabad police station, where it was originally registered, to Zaman Town station. That same day, the provincial government first floated the idea of a judicial commission — only to shelve it a day later after the family said it had made no such request and expressed confidence in the newly reconstituted investigative team.
The current standoff traces to the family’s August 19 letter, in which Ali’s parents, Mir Hussain and Mariam Hussain, asked the chief minister to personally supervise the investigation and to order both a criminal inquiry and a departmental review of the original investigating team, including the immediate suspension of the officers involved.
When the province announced its commission decision Sunday, the family’s objections were immediate. Nasir said the family had not been consulted, the commission’s terms of reference had not been disclosed, and police had yet to file their own investigative report with the magistrate.
In a video message posted after the announcement, Ali’s sister said the family learned of the government’s decision through news coverage, not through any direct communication. “On August 24, the police are to submit their report,” she said. “But if there is no report yet, on what basis are they making this decision? We, as a family, are not standing for this decision. We have been saying this since the beginning that we do not trust how the proceedings are going on.”
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