KARACHI: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Thursday framed charges against main suspect Armaghan Qureshi and co-accused Sheraz alias Shavez Bukhari in the Mustafa Amir murder case.

Amir, 23, was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by his friends — Armaghan and Sheraz — in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA) on Jan 6, 2025. According to the police, the accused stuffed Amir’s body in the trunk of his car and torched it in the Hub area of Balochistan.

Both accused denied the charges before the court, which also summoned witnesses and adjourned the hearing until March 12.

A final charge sheet against Armaghan in the murder case was filed in August 2025.

In the document, Investigating Officer (IO) Muhammad Ali had said that the last known location of the victim and the two suspects was Armaghan’s house in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA).

The IO stated that blood collected from Armaghan’s house allegedly matched samples taken from the body recovered from the car in Hub.

The report claimed that CCTV footage had been recovered showing the individuals cleaning Mustafa’s bloodstains from a carpet.

In the wake of the murder, three junior police officers, including the Darakhshan station house officer (SHO), were suspended and demoted to lower ranks over their “unprofessional conduct” while probing the kidnapping and murder case.

However, then-Sindh inspector general Ghulam Nabi Memon had defended senior police officials responsible for the investigation, saying they did face certain “handicaps” due to a host of factors during the initial probe.

Last month, a Karachi judicial magistrate granted Armaghan post-arrest bail in a case involving an illegal call centre and credit card data theft.

Other cases

Besides the murder case, Armaghan is facing several other charges.

Armaghan had been implicated in a data theft case in a first information report (FIR) registered with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on April 16, 2025.

The case accused Armaghan of operating an “illegal call centre” in Karachi’s DHA, which was used for harassment, fraudulent activities, identity impersonation, cheating, spoofing, phishing, and extortion.

In July 2025, the IO of the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) informed a judicial magistrate that Armaghan had rented two properties to set up call centres in Lahore and Islamabad after Amir’s murder.

Cases had previously been filed against him for injuring policemen during a February 2025 shoot-out that led to his arrest, as well as for the recovery of imported illegal weapons and money laundering.