By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday turned down a petition from the family of Mir Raza Ali asking judges to order the formation of a joint investigation team to probe the young businessman’s death, ruling that the decision to create such a body belongs to the provincial government, not the courts.
A two-judge bench, Justice Adnanul Karim and Justice Muhammad Jaffer Raza, delivered the verdict after reserving judgment Monday on the family’s petition. The ruling closes one avenue the family had pursued since Ali’s death in late July, even as the underlying murder investigation continues.
Ali, a graduate of the Institute of Business Administration and a businessman, disappeared July 28 and was found dead the next day in Karachi’s Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighborhood. His father has insisted from the outset that his son was murdered, rejecting early police theories that pointed toward suicide.
The court’s written order acknowledged the family’s grief but said sympathy could not override legal procedure. Judges noted that the investigating officer had assured the court that every available resource would be used to complete the inquiry, including assistance from other investigative agencies if necessary, and directed that the probe move forward in a manner that is impartial, fair and swift. The bench added that the family remains free to pursue other legal remedies to ensure the investigation stays transparent.
Jibran Nasir, the attorney representing Ali’s family, said they intend to appeal. He argued the family had never asked the court to run the investigation itself, only to conduct a judicial review of what he described as documented lapses and failures — evidence, he said, that should not have been dismissed as “disputed facts.” Nasir distinguished between asking a court to supervise an investigation and asking it to determine whether that investigation had been compromised, saying a constitutional court can undertake the latter when a probe appears poorly conducted or doubtful. Having a legal remedy available is not sufficient, he said; it must also be timely and effective.
A case shadowed by dispute from the start
The path to Wednesday’s ruling has been contentious since Ali’s body was discovered. Police initially built their case around the possibility of suicide, a conclusion his family disputed immediately. Karachi Police Surgeon Dr. Summaiya Syed told Geo News in the days following the discovery that findings in the post-mortem report raised questions, including apparent mismatches between some observations and available photographs.
On Aug. 6, a Karachi court granted a request from Ali’s father to exhume the body, ordering a medico-legal board be formed to conduct a second autopsy. The Sindh health department initially named an eight-member board with Dr. Syed as convener, but the board was reconstituted hours later, on Aug. 7, through an order from the department’s director general — keeping Dr. Syed as convener but replacing other members.
Ali’s family rejected the revised board, delaying the planned exhumation. Their counsel accused authorities of trying to obscure the facts. The provincial government subsequently restored the original board, and the exhumation went forward Aug. 8.
The following day, the Sindh inspector general’s office announced a reconstitution of the investigative team, and Karachi’s additional inspector general transferred the case from Ferozabad police station, where it was originally registered, to Zaman Town police station. The reconstituted probe order also reflected that a murder charge had been added to the initial police report.
That same day, the provincial government floated the idea of a judicial commission to oversee the case, then shelved the plan a day later after the family said they had not requested one and expressed confidence in the newly reconstituted investigative team.
On Aug. 19, Ali’s parents, Mir Hussain and Mariam Hussain, wrote directly to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, asking him to personally supervise the murder investigation and to order a departmental inquiry — including possible suspensions — into the officers who had handled the case previously. The government acknowledged the letter, and on Aug. 23 announced it would form a judicial commission to examine whether the investigation had been conducted impartially and to determine the circumstances of Ali’s death.
The family’s legal team objected almost immediately, arguing the commission had been established without informing the family and that its terms of reference had not been made public. That objection became the petition filed Aug. 24, in which the family asked the court to reject the commission and instead order an independent, multi-agency joint investigation team made up of officers with no prior involvement in the case — the request the court denied Wednesday.
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