KARACHI: Mystery surrounds boy’s ‘hanging’ in mosque
By Imran Ayub
KARACHI, Oct 30: A 12-year-old boy was found on Tuesday hanged on the premises of a mosque in Shah Faisal Colony in mysterious circumstances, but police suspected the death was a murder. Apparently the suspects killed the boy and then hanged him to make it look like a suicide case.
Mohammad Anas, hailing from Muzaffargarh in Punjab, was a sixth grade student and had been staying with his maternal grandfather Qari Abdul Rahman for the last four years.
The Qari teaches at the madressah attached to Masjid-i-Aqsa, where the boy was found hanged, at Breli Colony in Shah Faisal Colony No 5.
“We got a report that a boy had hanged himself in the mosque,” said Shah Faisal Town SP Javed Meher. “But later when the police visited the spot, they observed that there were no signs of hanging on the boy’s neck or around it.”
He said quite visible and deep signs of rope were found on and around the shoulders of the boy suggesting that hanging was not the cause of the death.
Family members and relatives of the boy said he left home early in the morning for a nearby school as a matter of course and returned at the 10am break to have some food.
However, he did not return to the school after the break as inquiries by family members after his death showed. At 12.45pm the boy’s cousin and son of Moezzin Mohammad Rizwan opened the mosque, which is kept closed after Fajr prayers, and found Anas hanging with a rope.“We took the body to the nearby hospital, where doctors said he had already died,” said Qari Manzoor Ahmed, Peshimam of Masjid-i-Aqsa and maternal uncle of the deceased.
Answering a question, he said all the three doors of the mosque were locked and there was no proper way of entering it. However, he said the low walls of the mosque could be climbed easily.
Family members of the deceased resisted an autopsy of the body and wanted to take it to Punjab without going through legal formalities. They said the parents of the late Anas were anxiously waiting for the body for its funeral and did not want any legal proceedings.
The police insisted on autopsy, which delayed the process and it took almost three hours to resolve the issue after the body reached the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.
“Actually family members of the deceased seriously resisted the autopsy, which delayed the process. Otherwise we did not have any problem as we have the directives from the police,” said police surgeon Dr Bashir Sheikh.
Waiting outside the JPMC’s mortuary, Qari Abdul Rahman, maternal grandfather of the boy, was reluctant to term his grandson’s mysterious death a murder. He avoided commenting on the suspicions expressed by police and area people, saying that he was immensely grieved by the death and could not answer such questions.
“God knows better what had happed to him,” he said. “I don’t know whether it is a murder or something else. Currently we want to take the body to his parents, who have lost their beloved son.”
Unlike Qari Abdul Rahman, area police have almost reached the conclusion that the incident was a murder, which was being shown as a suicide act, and it might be linked to some people within the family.
“We have not yet registered a case as we are waiting for the initial findings of the medico legal report,” said Nasir Khan, the SHO of the Shah Faisal Colony police station.
“The way the child was found hanged suggested that he was hanged after being killed by suspects who knew the child very well and were also aware of the mosque’s entrance and structure.”
