Mir Raza death not a suicide, SHC told

Court reserves verdict on petition for JIT; govt opposes plea

KARACHI:

The investigating officer (IO) probing the death of Mir Raza told the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday that investigators were clear that the case was one of murder and not suicide, as the court reserved its verdict on a petition seeking the formation of a joint investigation team (JIT).

DSP Siraj Lashari, the investigating officer, told a two-member constitutional bench headed by Justice Adnan Karim Memon that the investigation was being conducted on the basis of digital evidence and that investigators were treating the case as a murder. "We are clear that it was a murder," Lashari told the court.

He said the investigation had been restarted on August 13 "from zero" and that investigators had recovered a bullet casing, although the weapon had not been found. Lashari said the post-mortem examination had ruled out the possibility of suicide. He added that investigators had also obtained CCTV footage showing where Mir Raza had gone for the last time.

The remarks came during a hearing of a petition filed by Mir Raza's family seeking an independent JIT to investigate his death.

The family appeared before the bench through lawyer Jibran Nasir. Sindh Advocate General (AG) Jawad Dero, Prosecutor General (PG) Syed Ghulam Shabbir Shah, Police Surgeon Dr Summiya Syed, IO DSP Lashari and other officials also appeared before the court.

Nasir argued that the request for a JIT had been made because the investigating authorities had failed to properly probe the case and no suspect had been arrested so far. He said the lack of arrests had also left questions about the motive and whether the case involved an abduction.

He alleged that the case had been compromised at a senior level and said police had continued to treat the death as a suicide until August 6. He also alleged that evidence had been destroyed and that CCTV footage from cameras within 200 metres of the site had not been properly preserved.