HYDERABAD, July 26: The District and Sessions Judge, Hyderabad, Prakash Lal M. Ambwani, here on Thursday paid a surprise visit to the spot where an under-trial prisoner (UTP), Mehmood Khoso, had allegedly been ‘tortured to death’ on March 15.

Mr Ambwani has been appointed Inquiry Officer by the Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court, Justice Saiyed Saeed Ashhad, who had taken suo motu action in Khoso’s death in custody of the jail officials.

Mr Ambwani has almost completed his inquiry as the chemical and external examination reports of the deceased have already been handed over to him.

On Friday, he visited the central prison in connection with a trial being conducted inside the jail under a provincial government notification.

While passing through the outer gates of the jail after the hearing of the day was over, he ordered his driver to stop the car exactly on the spot where Khoso died.

The confused jail officials around moved swiftly to ask the judge if he had any problem but he counter-questioned whether he stopped at the right place of Khoso’s death.

A jail source told this scribe that all the officials around the judge said that they didn’t know and gave different reasons for their absence from the jail or the spot at the time of Khoso’s death.

Four days after Khoso’s death, a murder case was lodged against the then prison chief, Mohammad Altaf Malik Awan, and other officials, including Ejaz Hyder, Aurangzeb Kangu and Jumo, on the directives of Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali following a constitutional petition moved by Ghulam Rasool Khoso, a cousin of the deceased.

The Seventh Additional District Judge, Syed Qurban Ali Shah Lakiyari, had, on June 14, rejected the pre-arrest bail application filed by Malik Awan in the case.