Senior cops, others booked in Dr Shahnawaz's custodial death

Almost nine days after the blasphemy accused Dr Shahnawaz Kumbhar was killed allegedly in a staged police encounter on September 19 in Mirpurkhas, the district's police has lodged an FIR.

The case has been registered at Sindhri police station on the complaint Muhammad Ibrahim Kumbhar, brother in law, nominating police officials and religious persons.

The accused have been booked under sections 201, 302, 364, 34 147 148 149 and 120b of Pakistan Penal Code; section 6/7 of Anti-Terrorism Act and section 8/9 of Torture and Custodial Death Prevention and Punishment Act, 2022.

The complainant named DIG Mirpukhas Range Javed Sonharo Jiskani, SSP Mirpurkhas Muhammad Asad Chaudhry, SSP Umerkot Asif Raza Baloch and other cops besides a local religious figure Pir Umar Jan Sarhandi and other private persons in the FIR.

He narrated that Dr Kumbhar happened to be a religious person who was recently going through some mental stress. According to him, after becoming embroiled in a controversy triggered by his allegedly blasphemous social media post, he left Umerkot to save his life.

Ibrahim alleged that Sarhindi while addressing a crowd in Umerkot not only demanded arrest of Dr Kumbhar but he also uttered death threats. "Arrest Dr Kumbhar or otherwise we still possess the gun of Mumtaz Qadri [who shot dead Governor Punjab]. What happened in Quetta? What happened to the governor? We will also find some Ghazi."

He claimed that after negotiating with the police, Dr Kumbhar surrendered at a hotel in Lyari, Karachi, in presence of their relative advocate Javed Ali Kumbhar. The complainant used both words arrest and kidnap to define the act of surrender in the FIR. The family believed that the doctor had been taken into police custody.

However, at around 4 am on September 19 the complainant received a call from a relative who told him about the killing of Dr Kumbhar in a police encounter whose FIR was lodged at Sindhri police station at 4.30 am the same day. The slain person's father was called to the district headquarters hospital where the dead body was handed over to him.

Ibrahim alleged that besides bullet marks, there were visible marks of torture on the hands, legs and back of the doctor. The body was later shifted to their village in Umerkot in an ambulance. But a crowd surrounded the ambulance after which the body was shifted in Ibrahim's car which headed towards their agricultural land. The mob chased the Kumbhar family and later succeeded in snatching the body and setting it on fire.

The complainant claimed that the police and the private persons remained hands in glove in the matter of killing and later burning the dead body of Dr Kumbhar. The nominated cops, who also include the police constables, have already been suspended from their positions.