By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: A second post-mortem examination has found that the gunshot wound that killed a 25-year-old businessman in Karachi last month is inconsistent with suicide, contradicting the theory police pursued for weeks after his body was discovered — and reigniting a legal battle over who should investigate his death.
The finding, issued by the Karachi police surgeon’s office, states that Mir Raza Ali died from a gunshot wound that entered through his back and exited through the front of his chest, rupturing his heart. An eight-member Exhumation Board reached the conclusion unanimously, according to the report, which also confirmed through DNA analysis that Ali was the biological son of Mir Hussain Ali and Marium Hussain.
Ali disappeared July 28 and was found dead the next day in the Gulistan-i-Jauhar neighbourhood. Police initially treated the death as a probable suicide. But that theory began to unravel almost immediately, after the police surgeon herself said publicly that some findings in the first autopsy did not match photographs of the scene.
The case has since become a test of public confidence in Sindh province’s police and judicial institutions, playing out simultaneously in a courtroom, a reconstituted police investigation, and a newly formed judicial commission — while Ali’s family presses for a fourth track entirely: an independent team with no ties to the original investigation.
On Monday, that fight reached the Sindh High Court, where a two-member constitutional bench reserved judgment on the family’s petition seeking a joint investigation team, or JIT. The hearing laid bare a sharp divide between the family’s lawyer and provincial officials over not just how Ali died, but whether the institutions investigating his death can be trusted to do so honestly.
A wound that changed the story
The second autopsy did more than complicate the suicide theory — it appeared to close the door on it. Investigators have since said the same.
DSP Siraj Lashari, the officer now leading the probe, told the court on Monday that his team has abandoned any suicide theory entirely. “We are clear that it was a murder,” he said, adding that a bullet casing has been recovered from the scene, though the weapon used has not been found. He said his team was still awaiting the final post-mortem report as well as a separate forensic analysis from Punjab.
Lashari said his investigation restarted “from zero” on August 13, following a shake-up that transferred the case from Ferozabad police station, where it was originally filed, to Zaman Town station. He said investigators have obtained closed-circuit footage showing Ali’s movements before his death, and that a murder charge has since been formally added to the police case file.
The exhumation that made the second autopsy possible was itself contentious. A Karachi court ordered the exhumation and a new medico-legal board on August 6, after Ali’s father petitioned for it. The Sindh health department appointed an eight-member board with Dr. Sumaiyya Syed, the police surgeon, as convener. Hours later, in the early morning of August 7, the department abruptly reconstituted the board with different members, though Dr. Syed remained in charge.
Ali’s family rejected the new panel, forcing a delay in the exhumation, which had been scheduled for that Friday. The family’s attorney, Jibran Nasir, accused authorities at the time of trying to obscure the facts of the case. The provincial government ultimately restored the original board, and Ali’s body was exhumed August 8.
A fight over who investigates
The question of suicide versus murder is no longer seriously disputed. What remains unresolved — and increasingly contentious — is who gets to determine what happened next, and why the original investigation stalled.
Nasir told the court Monday that police had clung to the suicide theory until August 6, despite what he described as mounting evidence to the contrary. He alleged that evidence had been destroyed, including closed-circuit footage from cameras within roughly 200 meters of the scene, and that officers he holds responsible for mishandling the case remain in their posts.
“How can the same officials be expected to assist an investigation into their own alleged lapses?” Nasir asked the court, according to an account of the hearing.
He also referenced the burning of the crime scene, which he said was set alight in an apparent search for a bullet — a comparison he drew, without elaborating further, to the washing of the crime scene following the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi.
Sindh Advocate General Jawad Dero pushed back forcefully against the family’s request for a joint investigation team, telling the court that such teams have no basis in the Code of Criminal Procedure and are typically formed only in cases prosecuted under anti-terrorism law. He said the provincial government’s alternative — a judicial commission headed by a sitting judge — was an independent body whose terms of reference already incorporate the family’s concerns.
Justice Omar Sial has been appointed to lead that commission, which held its first hearing last Friday and has summoned Dr. Osama Sheikh, the medico-legal officer who conducted Ali’s original autopsy, along with Ali’s family, their attorney, and a provincial government liaison.
Dero told the court the government would consider a joint investigation team later if warranted, and said anti-terrorism provisions could still be added to the case if the judicial commission recommends it.
Prosecutor General Syed Ghulam Shabbir Shah argued the request for a joint team was premature, noting that the case was registered and Ali’s body recovered within 24 hours of his disappearance, and that prosecutors have not yet received a completed investigation to review. He also rejected any suggestion that the provincial government bore responsibility for Ali’s death, saying such claims were circulating despite an active investigation, and noted that protests and road blockades have continued regardless.
Justice Adnan Karim Memon, who presided over Monday’s hearing, pressed both sides on a narrower question: who, under either structure, would actually examine the specific allegations of police negligence and evidence tampering that Nasir raised. The court also noted it must operate within the bounds of Article 199 of Pakistan’s Constitution, which defines the High Court’s jurisdiction, and questioned whether ordering a joint team would exceed that authority.
A federal deputy attorney general, appearing on behalf of the national government, told the court the matter was a provincial issue and that his office would defer to whatever order the bench saw fit to issue.
Lashari, the investigating officer, told the court his team’s work remains open until September 7, when a report is due. “We will bring whatever comes out of the investigation before the public, whether anyone likes it or not,” he said. Nasir asked the court to hold the family’s petition until that date; the bench declined, saying it would rule on the matter Monday. It ultimately reserved its decision without setting a date for a ruling.
Family softens stance, for now
Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Nasir signaled a shift in the family’s position — not abandoning the push for a joint investigation team, but tempering it. He said the family does not object to the judicial commission itself, but wants its authority expanded to make it more effective, and welcomed Lashari’s declaration in court that the case is being pursued as a murder.
“It’s preferable to the earlier uncertainty over whether the death was a suicide,” Nasir said, according to remarks made outside the courtroom.
He said the family’s immediate priority is expanding the commission’s terms of reference rather than opposing its existence outright, though he added that the family would consider taking its case to Pakistan’s Federal Constitutional Court if the Sindh High Court does not rule in their favor.
Dero and Shah, speaking separately to reporters after the hearing, both reiterated the government’s position: that a joint investigation team has no legal footing outside terrorism cases, and that the ongoing investigation should be given the chance to finish its work before any additional body is convened.
The provincial government had first floated the idea of a judicial commission on August 23, a day after Ali’s parents wrote directly to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah requesting his personal oversight of the case and a formal inquiry into the officers who handled the initial investigation. The commission proposal was announced days after the government had briefly considered — then dropped — a similar plan in mid-August, when the family said at the time that they had not requested a commission and still had confidence in the newly assigned investigative team.
That confidence has clearly frayed. Nasir’s petition challenging the commission’s formation was filed August 24, arguing for a multi-agency team made up of officers with no prior connection to the case. Where the case goes next now rests with the Sindh High Court, which gave no indication Monday of when it will rule.
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