By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: The Sindh home minister stood before a judicial commission Thursday and apologised without qualification, seeking to put to rest a dispute that had briefly stalled the panel’s inquiry into the death of a 25-year-old businessman whose family has insisted for weeks that he was murdered.
The minister, Ziaul Hassan Lanjar, told the three-member commission that the provincial government had no intention of directing how it conducted its work, after the government’s own advocate general interrupted proceedings two days earlier and drew a rare public rebuke from the judge overseeing the case.
“I have apologised unconditionally,” Lanjar told reporters outside the Sindh High Court after the hearing, adding that he wanted the victim’s family to receive justice and the commission’s work to bring the facts to light.
The case centres on Mir Raza Ali, an IBA graduate and businessman who disappeared July 28 and was found dead the next day in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar neighbourhood. His father has maintained from the outset that his son was killed, rejecting early suggestions that the death was a suicide. A second post-mortem examination, completed after the body was exhumed last month, has since confirmed the death was not self-inflicted.
The report found that Ali died of cardiac rupture caused by a gunshot wound that entered through his back and exited through the front of his chest. “The findings are inconsistent with suicide as the manner of death,” the report concluded.
A commission under strain
Thursday’s hearing was called specifically to address what happened at the previous session, on Tuesday, when Sindh Advocate General Jawad Dero objected as the family’s lawyer questioned police surgeon Dr. Summaiya Syed during her testimony. The intervention prompted the commission to suspend proceedings and summon Lanjar to explain the government’s position.
Justice Omar Sial, the Sindh High Court judge who chairs the commission, did not mince words about the episode. He told Lanjar the advocate general’s conduct had “added fuel to the fire” and been humiliating and disrespectful — language notable for a judge addressing a sitting provincial law officer. Justice Sial said he had written to the chief justice of the Sindh High Court, who had appointed him to lead the inquiry, and that the purpose of calling in the home minister was to restore public confidence in an investigation the victim’s family has openly distrusted.
That distrust, Justice Sial said, runs deep. He told the hearing that Ali’s parents have “very little confidence” in how the case has been handled, and that restoring that confidence — along with establishing the facts of their son’s death — remains the commission’s central task. He noted that the family had been permitted to question witnesses through their attorney, and asked directly whether the provincial government’s current posture matched the assurances of cooperation it gave when the commission was first formed.
Lanjar’s answer, delivered in person and later repeated to reporters, was unequivocal. He said the government was working to ensure peace and justice across Sindh and had established the commission for that purpose. He noted that the panel’s terms of reference explicitly permit it to summon any witness, and pledged that the government would supply whatever evidence or support the inquiry required.
“We do not want to interfere in the commission’s proceedings,” Lanjar said, telling the panel it was free to conduct its inquiry however it saw fit. He added that Home Department representatives would remain available to assist and that the family would receive whatever it needed. “We do not want anyone to think that the Sindh government does not want an investigation,” he said.
Despite the sharp words for Dero’s conduct, the commission indicated it wants him to remain in his post, calling him a “very capable” law officer and stating it did not want the episode read as evidence the provincial government was reluctant to pursue the case.
Speaking to the home minister directly, Justice Sial noted that the panel has repeatedly identified negligence in the case and said the Sindh chief minister shares that assessment. For his part, Lanjar told the commission that as home minister he was saddened by the family’s loss, and as a father, he understood their grief. He recalled that Sindh Assembly Standing Committee on Home Chairperson Faryal Talpur had been the one to request formation of the judicial commission in the first place, and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to seeing the process through.
Jibran Nasir, the attorney representing Ali’s family, asked the commission to formally note his appreciation for the minister’s clarification. In its written order, the commission recorded that the dispute had been “amicably resolved.”
New allegations, new witnesses
Nasir also told the commission Thursday that allegations had surfaced against Ali’s business partner, identified in proceedings as Ahmed, and that Ahmed’s own lawyer had made certain disclosures during earlier questioning. Nasir said he intends to file a formal application seeking Ahmed’s reappearance before the panel so he can place additional information on the record.
The commission separately took up the matter of Dr. Osama Sheikh, the medico-legal officer who performed Ali’s first post-mortem examination and who had been issued a show-cause notice over his demeanor toward a journalist. The panel found his written response “unsatisfactory and evasive” and ordered him to appear in person on September 15 to explain himself further.
At its next session, scheduled for September 14, the commission is expected to hear from Dr. Syed; Adeel Afzal, house officer at the Ferozabad — also referred to in commission records as Sachal — police station; Head Moharir Zeeshan, who was among the officers who visited the scene after Ali’s body was discovered; and Professor Naseem, chairman of the medical board that conducted the second autopsy. Because Professor Naseem is currently abroad, the commission ordered that arrangements be made for him to appear by video link.
Afzal’s station initially registered the case under kidnapping charges following Ali’s disappearance. After the second autopsy in August, the investigation was transferred to Zaman Town police station and a murder charge was added.
Public tips pour in
The commission’s registrar, Abdul Majid, told reporters he has received a stream of messages and emails from members of the public claiming to have information relevant to the case. One person offered to help the panel examine Ali’s Binance cryptocurrency accounts, which police say he had used for roughly four years. Another shared what the registrar described as information about Ali’s “digital footprints,” which will be passed to investigators. A separate tip pointed to an unnamed individual the sender described as suspicious and called for that person to be investigated, while yet another offered information related to Ali’s iCloud login credentials. Majid said the identities of everyone who has come forward will remain confidential.
A monthslong dispute over how to investigate
The path to Thursday’s hearing has been anything but straightforward. Within days of Ali’s body being recovered on July 29, Dr. Syed told Geo News that findings from the initial post-mortem had raised questions, since some observations in the report appeared inconsistent with available photographs.
On August 6, a Karachi court granted a request from Ali’s father to exhume the body, ordering a medical board to be formed to conduct a second autopsy. The Sindh health department initially assembled an eight-member board with Dr. Syed as convener, only to have the department’s director general reconstitute it hours later, in the early morning of August 7, as a five-member panel — still convened by Dr. Syed but with different members. Ali’s family rejected the changed board, forcing the postponement of the exhumation, which had been planned for that Friday. Nasir, the family’s lawyer, accused authorities at the time of attempting to obscure the facts. The government subsequently restored the original board, and the exhumation went forward on August 8.
The following day, Karachi’s additional inspector general of police, Azad Khan, transferred the investigation to Zaman Town police station from Ferozabad, where it had originated, and the inspector general’s office reconstituted the investigating team. Records from that reorganization showed a murder charge had by then been added to the case’s first information report.
That same day, the Sindh government moved to seek a judicial commission to investigate the case, then reversed course a day later after Ali’s family said they had not requested one and expressed confidence in the newly assembled investigation team.
The family’s position shifted again on August 19, when Ali’s parents, Mir Hussain and Mariam Hussain, wrote directly to Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah asking him to take personal, direct supervision of the murder investigation. They also asked him to order a departmental inquiry into the original investigating team and to immediately suspend the officers who had been involved. The provincial government acknowledged the letter and announced on August 23 that it would form a judicial commission — the one now sitting — to assess whether the investigation had been conducted impartially and to examine the circumstances of Ali’s death.
That decision itself became a point of contention. Nasir petitioned the Sindh High Court on the family’s behalf, objecting to a government-formed commission and instead seeking an independent, multi-agency joint investigation team composed of officers with no prior connection to the case. The court dismissed that petition on September 2, ruling that the decision to form such a body rests with the government.
The commission’s next hearing is scheduled for September 14.
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