Court orders exhumation after suspicious burial

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court has ordered the exhumation of a 30-year-old man's grave to conduct a medical examination and determine the cause of his death.

Justice Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan issued the directive while hearing a petition filed by Muhammad Yaqoob, the father of the deceased, who contended that his son's body was discovered at the dera of one Abbas Gujar on April 13. According to Yaqoob, the burial was carried out without fulfilling the required legal procedures and his son's last rites were performed without an autopsy.

Yaqoob stated that on April 17, he submitted an application to the SHO of Kahna police station, requesting the registration of an FIR into the matter. However, his plea for exhumation was dismissed by a judicial magistrate on the grounds that no FIR had been registered. Subsequently, an additional district and sessions judge overturned the magistrate's decision and ordered the exhumation on July 12, 2025.

That order was later challenged at the Lahore High Court by the opposing party.

During the proceedings, the petitioner pleaded with the court to uphold the decision allowing exhumation so a postmortem could be conducted to ascertain the cause of death. Justice Khan, after reviewing the case, ordered the authorities to proceed with the exhumation and conduct the medical examination as requested.