KARACHI: While a joint interrogation team investigating the allegations made by former Muttahida Qaumi Movement activist Saulat Mirza has completed the task and filed its report to the home department, the death row prisoner is learnt to have requested the Sindh High Court chief justice to defer his execution and order action against those who extended threats to his wife from South Africa.

Informed sources, however, said that the member inspection team of the SHC advised Mirza’s counsel to seek legal remedy under the law.

Also read: ATC asked to issue new black warrant for Saulat Mirza’s hanging

The JIT was set up by the Sindh government to investigate the allegations made by Mirza against the MQM, its founding chief Altaf Hussain and the Sindh governor through a video statement.

The statement was aired by news channels just hours before his execution last month that later won him a new lease of life for a month.

A source privy to the recent JIT development said: “The interrogation has been done during which the team conducted a couple of interviews with the convict at the Machh jail in Balochistan.”

“The report carries several facts which were already part of the file prepared during the judicial process and trial of the convict though there are a few new ones which have been incorporated in the report.”

The sources said that Mirza wrote four different letters to SHC chief justice Faisal Arab. In one of the letters, he urged the court to order police to include in the Shahid Hamid murder case the accused persons he had named in his latest statement.

The death row convict also informed the SHC that some people in South Africa were giving threats to his wife and other family members whose life was in danger, said the sources.

The sources said that the death row prisoner asked the court to order recording of his statement before a judicial magistrate so that a fresh charge-sheet in the Shahid Hamid murder case could be submitted in the trial court against the accused persons he had mentioned in his statement.

They added that Mirza in his letter stated that his wife knew the names of those who extended threats of dire consequences. He requested the court to direct the law-enforcers to immediately arrest those giving threats.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2015

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