Sindh government to form JIT in Mir Raza murder case after judicial commission calls police probe ‘epic failure’
KARACHI: The Sindh government has decided to constitute a joint investigation team (JIT) to probe the murder of Mir Raza Ali, acting on the recommendations of a judicial commission that tore apart the police’s handling of the case.
Sindh Home Minister Zia-ul-Hasan Lanjar made the announcement on Thursday while speaking to the media at the Sindh Assembly. The Mir Raza JIT, he said, would be formed after approval from the chief minister, and the Federal Investigation Agency would be formally approached in this regard.
A subcommittee of the Sindh Cabinet has already reviewed the matter and briefed the chief minister, Lanjar said. Once the chief minister approves its draft recommendations, the JIT will be constituted and a letter sent to the FIA. “I will recommend to the chief minister that the JIT complete its investigation and submit a charge sheet before the relevant court,” he added.
A separate committee headed by Zulfiqar Larik will inquire into the conduct of police officers in connection with the case, the minister said. The affected family had approached the constitutional court seeking the formation of a JIT; the petition was dismissed, but the family has agreed to a JIT investigation, he maintained.
The announcement follows the release of a damning 62-page report by the single-member judicial commission headed by Sindh High Court Justice Umar Sial, made public on Tuesday after the provincial cabinet’s approval. The commission concluded that the medical and physical evidence was “incompatible with suicide.”
“The bullet trajectory, the unusual location of the wound for a self-inflicted injury, the absence of blood, the state of the body, the principles of medical jurisprudence, acid burns and the anesthesia detected in the blood, all clearly excluded suicide as the cause of death. It was a murder,” the report stated.
In a scathing assessment, the commission termed the police investigation an “epic failure”, warning that the trust deficit between the Sindh police and society had become “nearly unrectifiable” in the case. It recommended a JIT led by DIG Irfan Baloch comprising representatives of the ISI, IB, Pakistan Rangers (Sindh) and the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, and called for departmental and criminal proceedings against officers responsible for investigative lapses. It also urged the Sindh Police to acknowledge its shortcomings and apologise to the public.
The case began on July 28, when 25-year-old Mir Raza Ali — an IBA graduate who ran the dessert business Wafflix — left his home in Karachi’s PECHS area in the early hours and never returned. His family reported him missing the same day at the Ferozabad police station; his body was found the next morning within the jurisdiction of the Gulistan-e-Jauhar police station. Police initially treated the death as a suicide, but the family challenged that conclusion, pointing to marks of violence on the body. After shortcomings were identified in the initial post-mortem, a court ordered the exhumation of the body on August 8 for a second post-mortem, which ruled out suicide and found he had been shot from behind. Murder and evidence-destruction provisions were then added to the case.
