Police refuse to register case for JSQM chairman Bashir Qureshi’s death

Party workers staged a sit-in on Thursday after the police refused to register an FIR.

HYDERABAD: Five months have elapsed since the death of Jeay Sindh Quami Mahaz’s chairman, Bashir Qureshi, but the party’s workers and police are still locked in a stalemate. The law enforcers are refusing to give in to the workers’ demands to treat Qureshi’s death as a homicide and register an FIR.

Qureshi passed away on April 7 in Sakrand, Shaheed Benazirabad. The doctors concluded that he had died of food poisoning but JSQM leaders and Qureshi’s family suspect foul play. On Thursday, the party’s workers, led by newly elected chairman and Bashir Qureshi’s son, Sunan Qureshi, staged a sit-in outside the Sarkand police station and blocked the National Highway when the law enforcers refused their request to register an FIR against the state’s institutions.

The protesters ended up submitting a complaint letter to the police. “I believe that the intelligence agencies conspired to kill Qureshi,” wrote his brother, Maqsood. “He survived an attack on his life on June 4, 1998, in which a party leader, Qayum Magsi, was killed. [My brother] was attacked again on July 24, 2009, in Karachi. Another JSQM leader, Zahid Mustafa Khaskheli, was killed in this attack, but Qureshi managed to escape.”

Maqsood maintained that the state’s agencies were afraid of Qureshi, especially after his March 23 rally in Karachi. “He began to get more threats after that rally.”

JSQM has been demanding an examination of Qureshi’s death by a UN-led commission or another credible foreign institution to prove that food poisoning was indeed the cause. Sunan Qureshi told the protesters that he does not believe that his father died a natural death and that he would continue to press for a UN commission to probe the cause.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2012.