ISLAMABAD: Sindh police admitted on Wednesday before a Supreme Court bench hearing a case about murder of a director of the Orangi Pilot Project, Parveen Rehman, that their capacity to investigate ‘blind murder cases’ was limited.

Ms Rehman was shot dead on the Manghopir road in Karachi on March 13 last year by terrorists when she was returning home from office.

The Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Crime Investigation Agency and head of the Joint Investigation Team for the case, Sultan Ali Khwaja, told a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk that Mehfoozullah Bhallo, who was killed in a police encounter last week, was involved in the murder of Ms Rehman.

Also read: Another suspect wanted in Perveen Rehman murder case killed in ‘encounter’

The bench, however, made it clear to DIG Khwaja that the court was not disposing of the case after the death of the alleged killer, Mehfoozullah Bhallo, because the matter was of public importance.

DIG Khwaja assured the court that police were not closing the investigation and said the other people involved in the murder would be investigated with help of the Intelligence Bureau.

He said that investigations had not proved any direct involvement of land mafias in the murder of the social worker.

During the proceedings, the court asked what terrorist gangs operating in Katti Pahari area of Karachi had to do with the Orangi project.

Advocate Raheel Kamran Sheikh, representing the petitioners, deplored that the JIT was “deliberately ignoring the possible involvement of land mafias” in the case because of “vested interests of a wide range of influential parties”.

He said that relevant officials of the Board of Revenue of Sindh should be included in the investigation to explain why the process of regularisation of land had been stopped after the murder of Ms Rehman even though there were more than 1,000 pending applications.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2014