Murder or robbery: Special Education Director found dead

ISLAMABAD: Director of Special Education, Arshad Owais Qazi was found dead in his house apparently resisting an attempted robbery. Police, on the other hand, were almost certain that the killer had faked ‘the robbery to cover the murder’.

Qazi was alone at home after his wife had gone to Rawalpindi on work and children left for school. The family had no servants. As per his everyday routine, Qazi gave a missed call to his secretary at around 10:30 am, told him not send the car to pick him.

“When the secretary called back, Qazi told him to submit his leave application as he was not coming to the office,” said a police official.

Between 10:30 am and 2:30 pm Qazi’s phone remained silent, without activity. “He had received a call from a number at 2:37 pm. The caller’s name was recorded in codes in his cell phone,” said a police official, in possession of the cell phone.

Some time before three, Qazi’s son returned from school and found the front door of the house locked from inside. He entered the house from the kitchen door.

On the sight of his father, he called his mother. “He is lying on the sofa in a position from where I can not describe whether he is dead or just unconscious,” the child told his mother. Qazi’s wife thought he would have suffered a heart attack, as he was a patient of angina.

She called the Rescue 1122 and asked them to reach their house in sector G-8/4. In the meanwhile, their neighbours had also informed the Rescue 15 police.

By the time the Margalla area police were informed about the incident, Qazi had already been shifted to Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.

There was a deep stab wound on his chest.

“He was stabbed with the help of a kitchen knife which had penetrated his heart and proved fatal. There were also cuts on his fists of both hands,” the external postmortem of the body suggested.

A police investigation team reached his residence and examined the crime scene. After collecting the available evidence and murder weapon, a kitchen knife, the police suspected it was not a robbery.

“The killer could have been some one known to Qazi, as his entry into the house was friendly. No locks were broken,” said a police official.

There were signs of scuffle inside the kitchen though. “A pane of the kitchen window was shattered and it appeared as two men had scuffled there, during which either of them could have been smashed against the window,” said a police officer.

The cut marks on his arms showed that Qazi had resisted the killer’s attempt to murder him before finally giving up, on which, the killer was able to stab him in the heart, the police suspected.

“Another possibility was that Qazi suffered a heart attack during the scuffle and died before he was stabbed by the killer,” said an investigation officer but claimed it had to be confirmed by the postmortem reports.

The killer had stolen a microwave oven and pulled out closets in the drawing room, trying to give the impression of a robbery. “He had also changed Qazi’s clothes after killing him as there was no whole in his shirt and vest from where the knife would have entered his body,” suspected the police official.

The family of the deceased did not nominate anyone as a suspect. Qazi was a government servant and a known social worker.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2011.