Mir Raza Ali, 25, was an IBA graduate who ran a waffle business called Wafflix in Karachi. He went missing from his home in PECHS in the early hours of July 28, and his body was found the next morning in Gulistan-e-Jauhar. Nearly three months later, a judicial commission has said plainly that it was murder, not suicide, and that the police investigation failed at its most basic task.
According to The Express Tribune, the single-member commission headed by Sindh High Court judge Justice Omar Sial submitted its report to the Sindh chief minister on October 15. The paper reviewed the executive summary.
How the suicide theory collapsed
Police initially treated the death as suicide, while the family said the body bore torture marks. The commission records that in early August the police surgeon flagged anomalies in the first post-mortem report, the very document the suicide theory rested on. The body was exhumed on August 8, and a final report issued around the end of August found the cause of death to be a gunshot wound from the back, ruling out suicide. Murder and destruction-of-evidence charges were then added to the FIR.
The commission wrote that the bullet's trajectory, the unusual location of the wound, the absence of blood, acid burns and anaesthesia found in the blood all excluded suicide.
'A rudderless ship'
The report describes the police investigation as "a rudderless ship, not aware of its destination." It says the police theory rested on a few unconfirmed text messages, selective video footage and a first post-mortem report that did not itself conclude suicide. It adds that "an active cover-up in the initial stages of the investigation cannot be conclusively ruled out," and that dozens of officers handled evidence without documenting it.
The commission also called the overnight replacement of the special medical board an irregular and legally flawed overreach by senior health officials. However, it found no evidence that an August 9 meeting at the Chief Minister's House was convened to pressure a doctor.
JIT and FIA-led inquiry recommended
Saying the trust deficit between police and society is now "nearly unrectifiable" and that much physical evidence has been compromised, the commission concluded the case can only be resolved through an intelligence-based investigation. It recommended a JIT led by DIG Irfan Baloch with representatives of the ISI, IB, Pakistan Rangers (Sindh) and the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, and said police should acknowledge and apologise for past lapses.
It also proposed a high-level committee, preferably led by the FIA, to examine whether officers involved in the first ten days of the probe broke laws on destroying evidence and falsifying records, with criminal action against those found culpable.
Sindh cabinet sets up oversight panel
The commission recorded testimony from 50 witnesses in 20 open sessions. A spokesperson said the report was presented to the cabinet at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, who formed a subcommittee of Home Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar, Nasir Hussain Shah, Saeed Ghani and the advocate general to oversee implementation of its recommendations.