Murderous twist

There can be little doubt Kamran Faisal must have been under a fair degree of pressure, as are many NAB officials.

The mysterious death of NAB assistant director Kamran Faisal has added a new dimension to the Rental Power Projects (RPP) case, involving Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf. Connections between the events are immediately being drawn, though things as yet are far from clear. Faisal, an investigator in the RPP case, and according to some accounts, the author of the main report in it, was found on January 18 hanging from a ceiling fan at his allotted residence in the Federal Lodge in Islamabad. The police, including the Inspector General Islamabad, have stated that the death appeared to be a case of suicide, with the single door to the room locked from the inside. However the family of the officer, including his father, has immediately raised doubts over the suicide story, holding that Faisal, the father of two children, was murdered.

An autopsy has been ordered, and while its initial report has termed Faisal’s death a suicide, the whole matter remains bizarre and rather troubling. It also remains to be seen what action, if any, the Supreme Court — which is now due to take up the RPP case on January 23, after rejecting the NAB report submitted to it as ‘unsatisfactory’ — will take over the matter.

There can be little doubt that Kamran Faisal must have been under a fair degree of pressure, as are many NAB officials. However, he had a fair amount of experience, having joined the force in 2006, and it is not known what kind of turmoil he may have been facing. Right now, there are simply too many variables. All we have is mere conjecture, and this too is not healthy. Given the nature of the case and the delicacy of the RPP issue, it is important we get to the bottom of the matter. Otherwise speculation will continue, adding not only to the complications in this case but to the troubled political scenario as a whole, at a time when too many doubts waft through the air keeping us all bound in an unsettling net of uncertainty.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th, 2013.