HARIPUR: A medical team of the district headquarters hospital exhumed the body of a minor boy on the court orders here on Wednesday, police and DHQ sources said.

The body was shifted to Trauma Centre for conducting post-mortem to find out the cause of death of the boy who was found dead at the cattle farm of his employer in village Sarai Gadai on Sept 23.

According to police records, Muhammad Usman, 12, son of Muhammad Sarfraz of Sarai Gadai village, was a grade 5 student at a local government school. However, due to his family’s poor financial circumstances, he was forced to discontinue his studies. About 15 days ago, a local landowner hired the minor as a domestic helper at his father’s request, paying him a monthly salary of Rs5,000.

On the morning of Sept 23, Sarfraz said, he was informed by the employer that Usman had allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself with a rope from a hook fitted into the wall. Sarfraz said the employer took him on his motorcycle to the cattle farm, where he found his son hanging from the rope. According to police, however, neither Sarfraz nor the employer knew the reason behind the minor’s alleged suicide.

The staff of the Tareen Abad police post shifted the body to the Rural Health Centre Kotnajibullah for an autopsy. However, according to police, Sarfraz, a driver by profession, refused to have his son’s autopsy conducted by doctors. The body was subsequently buried within a couple of hours after the police completed the legal formalities.

Later, Sarfraz and his wife, Rashida Bibi, told local media that they were suspicious of the circumstances surrounding their son’s death and did not believe that he could have committed suicide. They demanded a thorough investigation into the death.

The Kotnajibullah police subsequently approached Judicial Magistrate-III Haripur Waqar Ahmed under Section 157(1) of the CrPC, seeking permission to exhume the body, as the police also suspected the circumstances of Usman’s death.

The judicial magistrate allowed the exhumation. In compliance with the court’s order, doctors from DHQ Hospital Haripur exhumed the body and conducted a post-mortem on Wednesday morning at the graveyard in Sarai Gadai village, amid tight security, police said.

The post-mortem findings were not immediately available and were expected to be submitted to the court within the next two days, according to police and hospital sources.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026