By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: A Sindh High Court justice opened the first hearing Friday in a judicial inquiry into the death of Mir Raza Ali, a 25-year-old businessman whose family has insisted for a month that he was murdered, even as police in a separate action filed charges against roughly 100 people accused of blocking one of the city’s main thoroughfares during a nightly vigil demanding answers in the case.
The two developments, arriving within hours of each other, illustrate how thoroughly the case has come to dominate public attention here — and how far apart the victim’s family and the provincial government remain on whether the official response has been adequate.
Ali, a graduate of the Institute of Business Administration, was reported missing from his home shortly after 4 a.m. on July 28. Surveillance video placed him alive as of 4:30 that morning. His body was found the following day in the Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighborhood. His father, Mir Hussain Ali, has rejected any suggestion that his son took his own life and has said publicly that he does not trust the investigation conducted so far.
That distrust was on display Friday as Hussain, his wife and their daughter sat before the newly formed commission for the first time, alongside the family’s lawyer, Jibran Nasir, who has fought the commission’s very existence since it was announced.
A pointed opening
Justice Omar Sial, appointed by the Sindh High Court’s chief justice to lead the single-member commission, opened the session with a moment of prayer for Ali and turned directly to his father.
“I am aware of what the family is going through,” he said.
It was, in some respects, a conciliatory gesture toward a family that had made clear it did not want this inquiry in the first place. Nasir had rejected the Sindh government’s decision to form the commission from the moment it was announced, arguing that it had been created without so much as notifying Ali’s relatives. That objection has not gone away; Nasir told the commission Friday that police officials sympathetic to the family were being obstructed from doing their jobs, and that people who had shown support for the family were now facing legal consequences of their own.
“Legal action is also being taken against people who are helping us,” he said.
Justice Sial, for his part, sought to draw a sharp line between this proceeding and whatever had preceded it.
“Whatever happens in the judicial commission will be before everyone,” he told the room, adding pointedly that earlier stages of the case had unfolded behind closed doors. He said the commission’s mandate, as defined by its terms of reference, was to examine flaws in the original investigation, assess police performance and identify any negligence — not to conduct a fresh criminal investigation itself.
“That is not the commission’s job,” he said of investigating the case directly. Its role, he said, was to identify where mistakes had been made.
He also moved to head off any perception that the inquiry could be influenced from outside, telling those present that he did not intend to meet privately with anyone connected to the case during the proceedings — invoking, as an example, the province’s most powerful official.
“Even if the Sindh chief minister comes to meet me, I will not meet him,” he said.
A timeline in dispute
Much of Friday’s session was devoted to establishing, for the first time in a formal setting, a detailed account of the hours surrounding Ali’s disappearance and the discovery of his body — an account that, according to Nasir, exposes significant gaps in the police response.
Nasir told the commission that Ali’s body was discovered on July 29 and that his family did not reach the scene until roughly 1:30 that afternoon. In the two hours before that, he said, no police officer arrived at all; two officers did show up around 12:15 p.m., but Nasir said their identities have never been disclosed to the family.
The body, he said, was transported by ambulance to Jinnah Hospital, where a post-mortem examination was performed the same day without what he described as proper police proceedings beforehand. Asked by the commission who had conducted the autopsy, Nasir identified the medico-legal officer as Dr. Osama Sheikh of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.
Nasir also walked the commission through the earliest hours of the case. He said personal items recovered from Ali were handed over to a police sub-inspector identified only as Nadeem at the hospital, and that a missing-person report was not formally logged until roughly 11 hours after Ali vanished — filed, he said, at around 3:15 p.m. on July 28. A kidnapping case, he added, was opened only after that same 11-hour delay.
According to Nasir, it was not police who first discovered Ali’s body but two employees of a nearby plant nursery, whom he identified as Yasir and Qaiser. Justice Sial asked directly whether the two men had been the ones to alert police; Nasir said they had.
“We are summoning all these people here to record their statements,” the judge said.
By the end of the session, the commission had formally summoned a substantial list of witnesses: the two nursery workers who found the body; the police officers who eventually responded; the ambulance drivers who transported it; volunteers from the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s best-known charitable ambulance and relief service, who were also on scene; and Dr. Sheikh, the medico-legal officer.
Justice Sial also said he wanted Siraj Lashari, the officer who investigated the case, to appear before the commission and assist its work, though he noted that would depend on Lashari’s availability.
The question of video evidence also surfaced. Asked whether CCTV footage of the area existed, Nasir said that footage from a camera mounted at a nearby mosque had been shown to the family — but that the complete recording had never actually been turned over to them.
A push for public evidence
Justice Sial used much of the remainder of the hearing to lay out how he intended the commission to gather information going forward, emphasizing repeatedly that the process would be conducted in the open.
He directed the Sindh government to turn over the full body of documentation related to the case by the following day, including lists of every police officer and physician who had been involved, statements already taken from witnesses, medical reports, and all original case records, so the commission could begin reviewing them.
He also ordered that a public notice be published in Urdu, English and Sindhi-language newspapers, inviting anyone with relevant information to come forward. Members of the public would be able to reach the commission by email or WhatsApp, he said, and notices would also be posted near the site where Ali’s body was found. Justice Sial said the Sindh government would be asked to post a reward of 100,000 rupees for information leading to answers in the case.
A focal person representing the Sindh government was present for the hearing and told the commission that whatever documentation was required would be provided.
Charges follow a night of protest
The commission’s opening session came against the backdrop of a separate legal action that has drawn its own scrutiny: a police case filed against roughly 100 demonstrators accused of blocking traffic on Sharea Faisal, Karachi’s principal thoroughfare, during a protest connected to Ali’s case.
According to a first information report filed by Sub-Inspector Muhammad Nizam, police observed approximately 100 people blocking a stretch of the road between Saddar and the airport at around 12:30 a.m. on August 27. The complaint states that the group was carrying sticks and banners bearing slogans such as “Arrest the killers of Mir Raza Ali,” and that officers attempted to persuade the crowd to disperse but were unsuccessful.
The report, filed at the Ferozabad police station, names 20 identified individuals along with what it describes as 75 to 80 unidentified associates. It cites several sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, including provisions covering rioting, unlawful assembly, obstruction of a public servant, wrongful restraint and intentional insult intended to provoke a breach of the peace.
Nasir told the commission the case had been registered against people who had simply expressed solidarity with the family the night before, and that the same first information report accused them of chanting “justice for Raza” while standing on Sharea Faisal.
The demonstrations the FIR describes are not isolated. For roughly a month, Ali’s family, along with friends, acquaintances and members of Karachi’s civil society community, have gathered nightly near the Nursery area of Sharea Faisal, saying they intend to keep demonstrating until the case is resolved to their satisfaction.
The commission’s next hearing is scheduled for September 1.
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