KARACHI (The Thursday Times) — Karachi police on Saturday dismissed Kamran Qureshi, the former station house officer of Gulistan-i-Jauhar, from service for failing to protect the scene where businessman Mir Raza Ali’s body was found in July.
The dismissal order says Qureshi did not secure the crime scene and did not call in the Crime Scene Unit as regulations require. As a result, it says, the scene could not be processed promptly, forensic examination was delayed, and important circumstantial evidence may have been lost.
The order describes this as “gross misconduct, inefficiency [and] dereliction of duty” under the Sindh Police (Efficiency and Discipline) Rules, 1988.
An inquiry by Muhammad Imran Khan, the senior superintendent of police for the Central district, found that Qureshi had not only failed to secure the scene and the evidence but had not visited the site at all. Khan recommended a major punishment.
Qureshi did not reply to a show-cause notice, the order says. He was heard in person in the orderly room on Friday, but his explanation was found unsatisfactory because he “could not add any cogent reason to repudiate the allegations levelled against him”.
Qureshi had already been suspended. Last month the joint investigation team probing the killing recommended an inquiry against him over possible help in destroying evidence.
From suicide to murder
Ali, 25, owned the Karachi dessert chain Wafflix. He went missing on July 28 after leaving his home in PECHS, and his body, with a gunshot wound, was found in bushes in Gulistan-i-Jauhar the next day.
Police first built the case as a suicide. They relied on the first post-mortem, which recorded a bullet entry wound in the chest, and pointed to business losses and money he had borrowed.
Police surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed disputed that post-mortem, which had been carried out by medico-legal officer Dr Osama Sheikh. After the body was exhumed, a second examination found the first report’s conclusion inconsistent with suicide. The exhumation board agreed unanimously that Ali died of a gunshot wound to the back.
Last month a judicial commission concluded in a 62-page report that Ali had been murdered. It called the police investigation an “epic failure” and recommended a joint investigation team. The Sindh government made the report public.
Sindh Home Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar announced the team on October 22, and it was formed the next day under DIG Irfan Baloch. The Inter-Services Intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau, Pakistan Rangers, and the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency were asked to nominate senior officers to it.
Earlier this week the team seized the licensed pistol of Ali’s business partner, and the North Nazimabad branch of Wafflix was sealed for further investigation. A Karachi court has given the team 10 more days to complete its probe.
