THE prime accused in multiple murder cases as well as a key suspect in the Baldia Town factory fire case has disappeared under circumstances described as ‘mysterious’ by the Rangers.

Rizwan Qureshi was arrested on five counts of murder and one count of possession of illicit weapons in June 2013, and interrogated by a Joint Interrogation Team a week later.

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He was indicted by a sessions court — where the trial was being conducted — in all six cases based on the recorded testimony of eyewitnesses as well as a confession he gave to the police, which has no weight before a court.

By October 2014, he was granted bail in all cases due to delays in recording the testimony of key eyewitnesses before the court. Then in early February the JIT report was made public when it was placed before the Sindh High Court in a case totally unconnected with the six counts on which Qureshi was being tried in the sessions court.

The report’s contents regarding the Baldia Town factory fire sparked a fierce political controversy, even though they were based entirely on hearsay. When the sessions court hearing the original six cases summoned Qureshi for a hearing on Feb 25, 2015, he failed to appear and has since been missing.

How could somebody accused of five counts of murder be granted bail? The clear answer is that the investigating authorities did a poor job of building a case for the court.

For one, his confession was never recorded before a judicial magistrate, which would make it legally admissible as evidence in court and might have been enough to secure his conviction.

Trying to convict someone accused of crimes as dangerous as the ones Qureshi was accused of on the basis of eyewitness testimony alone is very poor prosecution because eyewitnesses are easily intimidated.

Additionally, why was the JIT report not shared with police investigators or the prosecution in the trial under way in the sessions court, especially considering its recommendation that Qureshi “may be Challan [sic] in the cases in which he has disclosed his involvement” was signed by the SSP South, Karachi Police?

It almost seems as if trying Qureshi was a lesser priority to using his disclosures before the JIT for creating a political firestorm. Given these weaknesses in our prosecution and investigative capacities, perhaps it is not all that ‘mysterious’ that the prime accused in such heinous crimes has ‘disappeared’.

Published in Dawn March 5th , 2015

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