By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: A police surgeon whose findings blew apart the official account of a young Karachi businessman’s death told a judicial commission on Monday that she had been followed, threatened and subjected to an online smear campaign after she disputed the results of his first post-mortem examination.
Dr Summaiya Syed said a senior police officer had asked her to leave out of her report the fact that her findings were inconsistent with suicide, in exchange for more lenient treatment were she to face questioning herself.
“Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Crime and Investigation Amir Farooqi asked me to skip the part that postmortem findings were inconsistent with suicide in the report to ensure reprieve during investigation,” she told the one-member commission, headed by Sindh High Court’s Justice Omar Sial.
She said she was never in fact called in for questioning.
Dr Syed’s testimony forms part of a wider judicial inquiry into the death of Mir Raza Ali, a 25-year-old businessman whose body was found with a gunshot wound in bushes near a wedding hall in Gulistan-e-Jauhar on 29 July, a day after he was reported missing. His family have long insisted he was tortured and murdered, and have accused police of attempting to steer the investigation towards a suicide finding — a version of events that has since unravelled under scrutiny.
The case has drawn sustained public attention in Karachi, not least because of failings in the initial police response that were acknowledged by the Sindh police chief himself.
Threats, surveillance and a “public campaign”
Describing the toll the case had taken, Dr Syed told the commission she had put her career and livelihood on the line by pursuing her findings.
“I was followed by a motorcycle for two days. I was also given threats,” she said.
She told the hearing that her home address and her husband’s name had been shared online as part of what she described as a public campaign against her, and that attempts had been made to implicate her family in criminal activity. She said she had lodged a complaint with the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) over the matter.
Dr Syed said she had raised her security concerns directly with DIG Farooqi and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Samiullah Soomro, but that nothing had come of it.
She also told the commission that an officer from the Central Investigation Agency, Inspector Muhammad Ali, had approached her seeking the case record. Justice Sial responded by summoning the officer to appear at the next hearing, scheduled for Tuesday.
Justice Sial offered Dr Syed police or Rangers protection, which she turned down. He nonetheless directed the additional law secretary to ensure her safety and to bring her statements to the personal attention of Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah and the provincial interior minister.
“This situation is not at all acceptable,” the judge said.
Asked why she had pressed ahead regardless of the risks, Dr Syed told the commission the case had become something of a line in the sand for her.
“I would do the same if I have to in another case,” she said.
How the second post-mortem came about
Dr Syed walked the commission through the sequence of events that led to Ali’s body being exhumed. She said she had first flagged concerns to SSP East in an August 3 letter, warning of the risk of “false negatives emerging during autopsy due to sampling delay”. She raised the matter again at a meeting with police on August 5, before formally notifying the health secretary and other officials once a court order for a second post-mortem was issued.
The catalyst, she said, was a mismatch she had identified in early August between the original medico-legal report — prepared by Medico-Legal Officer Dr Osama Sheikh — and the photographic evidence available from the scene. That discrepancy prompted Ali’s family to request his exhumation, and a second post-mortem was subsequently carried out by a medical board that included Dr Syed.
She told the commission she had faced resistance even in staying on that board. “I was verbally told by the Sindh health department deputy secretary to withdraw from the board, but I told him off, pointing that my name was included in the judicial magistrate’s order,” she said.
The board’s composition was changed shortly afterwards, with every member except Dr Syed replaced — a decision she said she still could not explain when asked by the commission. She said Ali’s family objected to the new line-up, delaying the process, and that on the day of the exhumation, Additional Inspector General Azad Khan issued an order from the Director General of Health Services allowing the original members to rejoin. The health secretary, she added, ultimately restored the original board following the family’s objections.
Dr Syed defended the panel’s credentials, telling the commission its members had been selected for their experience and expertise, and that it included what she called the “most competent” specialists available. She said 263 photographs were taken during the second examination.
Pressed by Justice Sial on whether the Sindh Medicolegal Act 2023 had come into force, Dr Syed confirmed that it had, but said the accompanying rules had still not been notified. Advocate Jibran Nasir, addressing the commission separately, noted that the Sindh High Court had directed the authorities in 2024 to notify those rules — a direction that has yet to be complied with.
What the second post-mortem found
The commission was shown photographs from the exhumation process during Monday’s hearing, at which point it asked Ali’s family to leave the room, noting that some of the images “could be unbearable for them”.
Dr Syed told the commission that the second examination had found an injury mark on Ali’s head, a separate mark at the back of his head consistent with being struck by a hard object, and a broken nose bone — all injuries, she said, that were sustained before his death.
She said samples for gunshot residue had not been taken during the first post-mortem, and that the original report had also recorded the wrong size for the bullet wounds. She further noted that the decomposition pattern on Ali’s face did not match that of the rest of his body, and that the gunshot had fractured his ribs and damaged both his lungs and heart.
Dr Syed also told the commission that Ali’s body bore marks consistent with acid burns, which a chemical examination report had confirmed. She said his hands and feet showed similar chemical burn injuries that the first autopsy had mistakenly attributed to decomposition. Four skin specialists were consulted as part of the review, she said, and found that hydrochloric acid causes polyester to carbonise — carbonisation that was subsequently identified on Ali’s shirt.
She also raised questions over blood volume at the scene, noting that the amount found was significantly less than the four to five litres an average human body contains, a discrepancy she said was especially notable given the damage to Ali’s heart.
Justice Sial’s commission continues to hold regular hearings into the case, with Inspector Muhammad Ali due to appear on Tuesday. The inquiry is examining not only the circumstances of Mir Raza Ali’s death, but the conduct of the initial police investigation and the pressures reportedly brought to bear on those, including Dr Syed, who challenged its conclusions.
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