Medical board wraps up process in Mir Raza’s murder case in Karachi

KARACHI: The exhumation process for the body of Mir Raza Ali proceeded in Karachi on Saturday, with the medical board’s teams later leaving the graveyard after completing sample collection work.

The process began around 10:48am, when the deceased’s father Mir Hussain’s lawyer, Jibran Nasir, arrived at the graveyard. By 10:55am, the exhumation had formally commenced, with members of the eight-member medical board along with the deceased’s parents entering the site. No unrelated individuals were allowed inside, with a heavy police presence deployed at the location.

Doors and windows of buildings surrounding the graveyard were ordered shut by the magistrate during the exhumation process, after it emerged that videos of the exhumation were being filmed from nearby buildings. Following the magistrate’s objection, police were deployed inside the residential buildings as well.

At 10:40am, the parents identified the grave, and by 11:09am, the body had been shifted out for examination. The medical board’s teams, working inside a tent set up outside the graveyard’s premises alongside the judicial magistrate, continued their work from that point onward, before wrapping up and stepping outside the graveyard following the completion of sample collection. Members of the board were seen consulting among themselves afterward.

Speaking informally to the media, Jibran Nasir, the lawyer representing Mir Hussain, said the victim’s family was satisfied with the proceedings so far. He said the post-mortem examination was still ongoing, adding that while some evidence had been recovered, only the medical board could determine the quality of that evidence. He said the process would require further time before it could be completed.

Mir Raza ‘murder’ case

Mir Raza, a graduate of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) and owner of the eatery Wafflix, had gone missing on July 28. His body was discovered a day later with a gunshot wound in bushes near Shahi Qila Ground in Gulistan-e-Jauhar. He was 25 years old.

A case was initially registered at Ferozabad police station under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code, pertaining to kidnapping or abduction with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person, based on a complaint filed by his father.

Police said their investigation so far indicates that Raza had been going through financial difficulties and had reached out to friends for money on the night he died. According to police, he left his residence in PECHS Block-2 and booked a ride through a taxi app; the driver dropped him off a short distance from where his body was later found.

The case took a fresh turn after Karachi Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed told a private news channel on that the postmortem report raised several unanswered questions, noting discrepancies between some of its observations and the accompanying photographs. She said the documented entry wound, bullet trajectory and exit wound did not align with one another. While acknowledging it was scientifically possible for a bullet to enter from the back and exit through the front, she clarified that her assessment was based solely on the postmortem report and photographs, since she had not personally examined the body.

She further noted that entry wounds are typically smaller than exit wounds in gunshot cases, and pointed out that gunshot residue, routinely tested for on the hands in suspected suicide cases, had not been examined in this instance.

Following her remarks, police authorities issued a statement warning that such observations could negatively impact the ongoing investigation. The statement added, however, that the body could be exhumed on the recommendation of a medical board, subject to court approval, to allow further clarification by a panel of medico-legal experts.