Medico-legal board for exhumation of Mir Raza Ali's body abruptly reconstituted

KARACHI: The medical board tasked with exhuming the body of Institute of Business Administration (IBA) graduate Mir Raza Ali has been reconstituted, it emerged on Friday. Ali’s body, bearing a gunshot wound, was found in bushes in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar last month. While his family is convinced that he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered, investigators probing the incident continue to build their case around the possibility that he died by suicide. A day earlier, a Karachi court allowed the exhumation on an application filed by Ali’s father, wherein the court directed the police surgeon and the Sindh health secretary to constitute a medico-legal board for the exhumation of Ali’s body “at the earliest possible date and time”. The court ruling came on an application filed by Ali’s father, Mir Hussain Ali Khan, after a controversy emerged between the Karachi police surgeon and investigators over alleged loopholes in the medico-legal report regarding the post-mortem examination. The Sindh health department then constituted the eight-member board, with Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed as the convener. Prof Dr Naseem Ahmed of Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), Dr Farah Waseem of Jinnah Sindh Medical University, Amir Hassan Khan of Citizens Police Liaison Committee, Additional Police Surgeon Dr Sirichand, Dr Kamran Khan and Dr Daniyal Mirza of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and Dr Mohammed Yaseen, the admin in-charge of the police surgeon office, were the other members of the board. However, a new order has been issued by the Sindh health directorate general. The notification, a copy of which is available with Dawn, said that the board had been reconstituted to conduct the exhumation and medico-legal examination of the deceased. While Dr Syed remained the convener of the new board, its members were changed to Prof Dr Zakiuddin from DUHS, Prof Dr Kazi Akbar and Prof Dr Abid Hussain Chang from Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences and Hyderabad Police Surgeon Dr Waseem Khan. The family’s lawyer, Jibran Nasir, alleged on X that the Sindh government had “maliciously” changed the members of the board without any explanation. “The family expresses no consent for this new board and will not allow it to exhumate the body tomorrow morning and corrupt whatever evidence remains and it will be formally communicated to authorities,” he said, adding that the fresh notification would be challenged at the appropriate forum.

Controversy over autopsy Raza, an IBA graduate and the owner of eatery Wafflix, had gone missing on July 28. The 25-year-old’s body was found a day later with a gunshot wound in bushes near Shahi Qila Ground in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. Initially, on the complaint lodged by his father, a case was registered at the Ferozabad police station under Section 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine a person) of the Pakistan Penal Code. Police maintain that the investigation has revealed that Ali had been facing financial difficulties and had asked his friends for money the night he died. According to police, he had left his home in PECHS Block-2 and hired a taxi through an app. The taxi driver dropped him a short distance from the spot where his body was found, police said. The case took a new turn when Karachi Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed told a private news channel on Tuesday that the postmortem findings of Ali’s body had raised several questions, as some observations in the report did not appear to match the available photographs. She said the reported entry wound, bullet trajectory and exit wound did not correspond with one another. While it was scientifically possible for a bullet to enter through the back and exit from the front, she stressed that her assessment was based only on the postmortem report and photographs, as she had not examined the body herself. The police surgeon noted that entry wounds were typically smaller than exit wounds in firearm cases. She also said that gunshot residue, commonly found on the hands in suspected suicides, was not tested for in this case. Her interview prompted the police authorities to issue a statement, terming such observations as having the potential to adversely affect the ongoing investigation. The statement, however, said that exhumation of the dead body could be done on the medical board’s recommendation for further clarification by a committee of medico-legal experts with the court’s permission.