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| May 27, 2005 | Friday | Rabi-us-Sani 18, 1426 |
Medical board due to submit report: AKU student’s death
MULTAN, May 26: The Special Medical Board constituted by the Sindh government is due to submit its report about the cause and manner of the death of a third-year student of the Aga Khan University, who belonged to Multan.
The eight-member SMB, headed by Prof Dr Tariq Sharafatullah, the principal of the Karachi’s Sindh Medical College, was directed on May 10 last to submit a report within 15 days. Asad Aftab, 22, was found dead under mysterious circumstances on Sept 16 last year in the AKU hostel room No 74 allotted to his class-fellow Zeeshan Ashraf. He was the son of Multan’s Dr Aftab Chaudhry and Dr Shehla Aftab.
His cousin Ayaz Mahmood, who lives in Karachi, lodged an FIR with the New Town police station against unknown person(s), suspecting that Asad’s death was unnatural. In his first report, a New Town police sub-inspector reported that fresh blood was oozing out from Asad’s left nostril and foam emitting out of his mouth. His both wrists had marks showing they had been roped together. The marks on wrists were proved ante mortem.
Later, Asad’s family accused his class-fellows — Zeeshan Ashraf, Kashif Anwar and Qazi Asad — of murdering him. The police appointed sub-inspector Shariq Saddiqi to probe the matter.
According to the interim chargesheet submitted to New Town area judicial magistrate by the police on April 25, 2005, the three suspects handed over Rs1.71 million to Altaf Khan Afridi to seek a ‘favourable’ report from the police. The go-between gave a portion of the amount to IO Shariq and asked families of the suspected AKU students to collect more money if they really wanted their wards to be exonerated of the (murder) charge.
Upon this, Kashif’s mother talked to some senior police officers while Zeeshan got registered an FIR (296/04) against Altaf Afridi and SI Shariq. The police rounded up Afridi and recovered Rs1 million from his possession while the sub-inspector secured pre-arrest bail from the Sindh High Court.
Reports are that Shariq Saddiqi had been dismissed from service for accepting bribe.
Subsequently, the investigation of the murder case was handed over to inspector Sarwar Husain, who submitted the challan to court against the accused. He also recovered the deceased’s cell phone from a shop in the electronics market of Karachi Saddar, which was allegedly sold by Qazi Asad.
According to the deceased’s family, the role of the AKU management remained dubious. Initially, it tried to give an impression that Asad’s death was caused by overdose of drugs. Moreover, the incident was reported after a delay of several hours and the university authorities collected urine samples of the deceased without bringing it into the knowledge of the police.
In its report, the AKU laboratory claimed presence of 456 opiate units in the deceased’s urine and, later, the samples were sent to the Sheffield Teaching Hospital in the UK. The STH reported 368 opiates in the urine.
“It seems that the AKU authorities were conducting a parallel forensic investigation into the case by bypassing the institutions/agencies established for the purpose by the state, deceased’s father Dr Aftab observed while talking to Dawn here on Wednesday.
In one of its reports about the case, the police also noted: “The AKU took urine and stomach samples of deceased Asad without any legal authority.” The chemical examiner, who studied the vital parts of the deceased’s body, reported presence of poison — Benzodiazepines — and no opiates. According to the postmortem report, Asad’s death was caused owing to suffocation.
At this, a special medical board, headed by the MS of the Karachi’s Services Hospital, was constituted on an application of one of the accused to decide which of the reports was correct.
The board, however, failed to do so and proposed that the samples be sent to the UK for qualitative and quantitative analysis.
The deceased’s family objected to the SMB’s proposal, calling it delaying tactics, and urged an in-house board formation to decide the matter. The SMB was then reconstituted under Dr Sharafatullah. The new board was also assigned to look into the legality/authenticity of the AKU reports because the urine samples of the body were taken by the university without observing the legal formalities. A court in Karachi cancelled the pre-arrest bail of accused Zeeshan a few days ago, but confirmed it for the other two accused.
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