By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: A high court judge has refused to let the doctor who carried out the first, disputed autopsy on murdered businessman Mir Raza Ali make a further statement to the judicial inquiry investigating his death, accusing him of trying to “throw mud” at a colleague and the region’s chief minister.
Justice Omar Sial, the Sindh High Court judge leading the one-man commission examining the case, said on Monday that Dr Osama Shaikh had asked to appear again after giving television interviews in which he claimed to have more to tell investigators than he had previously disclosed. But when pressed on what exactly he wanted to add, the judge said, Dr Shaikh insisted he was not suggesting that Mr Ali, a 25-year-old entrepreneur, had taken his own life — only that he wished to defend his original conclusion that the fatal bullet had struck from the front.
“I also sense from the questions I asked of him that his sole purpose in recording a further statement is to throw mud at the police surgeon and the worthy chief minister. I will not allow either,” Justice Sial wrote in his order. “The commission is not a forum for mud-slinging.”
The ruling is the latest twist in a case that has gripped Pakistan since Ali’s body was discovered in bushes near a wedding hall in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighbourhood at the end of July, a day after he was reported missing. His disappearance and death have drawn intense scrutiny, not least because he was the well-known founder of the waffle chain Wafflix, and because his family has waged a sustained and public campaign accusing police of botching the initial investigation and trying to pass the case off as a suicide.
A contested autopsy
At the heart of the affair lies a bitter dispute over how Ali died. Dr Shaikh, a medico-legal officer, conducted the first post-mortem examination in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the body. His findings were later called into question by Karachi’s police surgeon, Dr Summaiya Syed, who identified inconsistencies between the report and photographic evidence from the scene. That intervention triggered a fraught sequence of events: a court-ordered exhumation, the reconstitution of the medical board tasked with the second examination — a switch the family initially rejected — and, eventually, a fresh autopsy that reached a starkly different conclusion.
The second post-mortem found that Ali had been shot in the back, with the bullet exiting through the front of his chest, and that his death was caused by “cardiac rupture consequent to perforating firearm injury of the chest”. Crucially, the report stated plainly that its findings were “inconsistent with suicide as the manner of death” — directly contradicting the narrative that investigators had, in the family’s telling, initially sought to build.
Dr Shaikh has continued to stand by his original findings. Speaking to reporters after appearing before the commission, he said he had personally carried out the post-mortem on 29 July, that no one else had performed the examination, and that his conclusions had been based on instructions from Dr Syed, to whom he reported his findings at the time. He has also sought to explain apparent anomalies in his report relating to hydrochloric acid and decomposition, arguing that such factors can produce inconsistent effects across different parts of a body. Dr Syed, for her part, has told the commission that she faced threats after she first raised concerns about the original autopsy.
Justice Sial made clear that he regarded further submissions from Dr Shaikh as unnecessary and unhelpful to the commission’s work. “I have enough information for that. The commission has its own mind to determine what has transpired. Therefore, I decline Dr Osama Shaikh’s request,” he wrote, adding that the panel’s terms of reference required it to establish the true facts of the case and to determine whether any negligence had occurred — something he said he was now equipped to do without hearing further from the doctor.
A case mired in controversy from the outset
The commission was established by the Sindh provincial government after Ali’s parents, Mir Hussain and Mariam Hussain, wrote directly to the region’s chief minister, Murad Ali Shah, in August, demanding his personal oversight of the investigation and calling for disciplinary action against the officers who had initially handled the case. Their intervention followed weeks of mounting anger over what they and their lawyer, Jibran Nasir, described as a catalogue of investigative failures — from the mishandling of evidence to a reluctance to treat the case as anything other than a possible suicide.
The family did not, in fact, want a judicial commission at all. When the provincial government first floated the idea in August, Mr Ali’s relatives said they had made no such request and expressed confidence in a newly reconstituted investigation team, leading the authorities to shelve the plan temporarily. When the commission was ultimately established regardless, the family’s lawyers challenged the decision before the Sindh High Court, arguing instead for an independent, multi-agency joint investigation team with no officers who had prior involvement in the case. That petition was dismissed on 2 September, with the court ruling that the formation of such a body remained “the prerogative of the government”.
Since beginning its work, the commission — which held its first hearing in late August — has proven willing to criticise the original investigation in blunt terms. The panel has previously admonished the case’s first investigating officer, finding that he had made little genuine effort to probe the circumstances of Mr Ali’s death and had failed to observe basic legal formalities, prompting a change in the composition of the investigating team altogether following objections from the family.
Business partner also cautioned
Dr Shaikh was not the only figure to face the commission’s displeasure on Monday. Justice Sial also issued a warning to Ahmed Bhardey, Ali’s business partner, over media interviews in which Bhardey similarly claimed to possess undisclosed information relevant to the case. The judge noted that Bhardey had been given the opportunity, at a meeting with Ali’s family on 19 August, to share whatever additional knowledge he claimed to hold — but that the family had since told the commission he had offered nothing beyond what he had already stated in his official testimony.
“It becomes obvious that Bhardey’s claims on certain channels were a mere attempt to derail the commission proceedings,” the panel’s order stated. “He is cautioned from attempting to do so.” The commission noted that Bhardey had additionally been offered the chance to file a sworn affidavit following his meeting with the family, but had not taken up that opportunity either.
Also raised during Monday’s proceedings was a complaint from Ali’s fiancée, who informed the commission via WhatsApp that her mobile phone had been confiscated and that data extracted from it had been passed to Deputy Superintendent of Police Siraj Lashari, the officer now leading the investigation. The commission indicated that DSP Lashari would be questioned on the matter when he next appears to give his own statement.
The panel also took evidence from several other witnesses on Monday, including Hyderabad’s Director General of Health Services, Pervez Ahmed Shaikh, who submitted a series of documents relating to the formation and subsequent reconstitution of the medical board that oversaw the exhumation, along with the court order that authorised it. A separate witness, identified as an investor named Ahmed Hassan Shaikh, produced a profit-sharing agreement dated 4 July, drawn up between himself, Ali and Bhardey.
Investigation continues on parallel track
Alongside the judicial commission’s inquiry, the criminal investigation itself continues before a separate judicial magistrate, who has granted investigators a further fortnight to complete their final report. DSP Lashari told the court that officers were still awaiting a range of forensic and financial material, including details of Mr Ali’s cryptocurrency trading activity on Binance and information from his bank accounts, as well as forensic analysis of mobile phones belonging to his fiancée, Mr Bhardey, his brother and Dr Shaikh himself. Investigators have yet to name a suspect.
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