KARACHI: A judicial magistrate on Tuesday granted five-day time to an investigating officer to submit the final investigation report in a case pertaining to death of Dr Maha Shah in Defence Housing Authority.

Police had initially said that the 24-year-old doctor, practising at a private hospital in Clifton, had allegedly committed suicide by shooting herself in her home in DHA on August 18.

Later, police booked her friends Junaid Khan, Waqas Hussain Rizvi and Dr Irfan Qureshi along with two others under relevant sections of law, including one pertaining to poisoning a person to death.

On Tuesday, the matter came up before the judicial magistrate (South) concerned, when the investigating officer of the case appeared on expiry of the time granted by the court for submitting the final investigation report, under Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

‘Second’ post-mortem

The IO Sub-Inspector Sharafat moved an application, mentioning that a no-objection certificate from the authority concerned had been obtained for exhuming the body of Dr Maha Shah, adding that an application was also filed with the judicial magistrate concerned at the Mirpurkhas district to seek the court’s permission for exhumation of the body for conducting a ‘second’ post-mortem examination to ascertain ‘actual’ cause of death of Dr Shah.

He further informed that a five-member medical board had also been constituted by the health department to conduct second post-mortem examination of the victim, but so far the court had not fixed any date for the exhumation of the body.

IO Sharafat further mentioned that meanwhile the cell phones of the suspects had also been sent to laboratory for a forensic examination and a report in this regard was still awaited.

Therefore, the IO requested the judge to grant 14-day time to enable him to complete the investigation and other legal formalities and submit the final investigation report under Section 173 of the CrPC.

However, the judge granted five-day time to the IO directing him to submit the final investigation report on the next date and adjourned the hearing.

Last week, two suspects booked in the case — Junaid Khan and Waqas Hussain Rizvi — had escaped from the court of an additional district and sessions’ judge after their interim pre-arrest bail was recalled and the applications for bail confirmation were rejected by the court.

The sole detained suspect, Dr Irfan Qureshi, was discharged from the case “for the time being” earlier this month by a judicial magistrate till the filing of the final investigation report by the investigating officer. Qureshi was granted post-arrest bail against a surety of Rs500,000.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2020