KARACHI: The brother of an accused in the famous Paras Shah case of Hyderabad approached the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Sindh seeking departmental inquiry and action against former SSP Sanghar, Bashir Birohi, and his team for wrongfully implicating five members of his family in a murder case.
Accused Israr Shah’s brother Syed Izhar Shah, in his complaint submitted to IGP Sindh Ghulam Nabi Memon, has claimed that Sanghar’s former SSP Bashir Birohi and his team declared the natural death of his relative Paras as murder and nominated five family members of his family including his brother Israr, cousin of the wife of deceased Paras, Imamzadi alias Farzana, wife of the deceased, and her brother, Deedar Shah, mother and father allegedly as per the whims and wishes of the family of the deceased. Both Israr Shah and Deedar Shah are languishing in police custody.
Izhar added that Paras’s demise was declared a natural death by two criminal investigations of the Police, one by the Investigation Officer of Police Station Bhitai Nagar and the other by a Special Investigator of Sindh Police DSP Siraj Lashari after geofencing, technical, call data and medical tests. Later, a team led by SSP Bashir Birohi, who was assigned a special investigation by IGP Sindh, without any solid evidence declared the death as murder and nominated five of Izhar’s family as accused of murder within two days in line with the statement of the deceased’s family.
Izhar said his brother and cousin were nominated as accused, despite being declared innocent in two different police investigations and were presented before the media by SSP Bashir Birohi where they confessed to an uncommitted offence under duress and torture. However, later both the accused denied their statements in court and complained about the torture which was further proved through a subsequent medical examination.
SSP Bashir Birohi told The News that the victim Paras Shah was murdered and did not die a natural death. The Police, he claims have found sufficient evidence proving the murder and show the involvement of the arrested and absconding accused too. SSP Birohi said it is surprising that the doctor who conducted the postmortem has shown no mark of injury on the body, as there was a lot of blood at the crime scene and this raises the question about the source of blood in case of natural death. He alleged there was a deliberate alteration in the police documents, filled by a police officer in the column, where marks of injuries were supposed to be mentioned.
Paras Shah was found dead on November 8, 2022, and the case was registered on November 14, 2023. Paras Shah’s widow Imamzadi alias Farzana stayed at the house of her in-laws for a period of some five months and completed her ‘Iddat’ and during that time no family member raised questions about Paras Shah’s unnatural death or murder.
The tragedy took an ugly turn when the family of Paras wanted Farazana to marry their other son to keep ‘some property of the deceased’ within the family. On her refusal, they retained the couple’s four-year-old daughter and refused to hand her over to her mother. After this, Farzana went to her parent’s house in Matli and approached Sessions Court, Karachi, to claim custody of her child. On May 11, 2023, the court directed her to approach the Family Court for taking custody. But on the very next day May 12, 2023, the brother and complainant of Paras Shah case and other family members recorded statements before Sanghar Police and for the first time nominated deceased Paras’s wife Farzana, her cousin Israr and her other family members as accused of murder.
On May 17, 2023, Sanghar Police, within the passage of five days, claimed to have solved the case by repeating the stance of the complainant before the media and the Court which subsequently proved to be a lie in other police investigations. Despite the claims of the Sanghar Police for having strong evidence, the Sanghar Police have failed to submit the charge sheet/challan of the case before the court. The police are also flouting the court orders of undertaking the medical examination of one of the accused Deedar Shah who is in police custody alongside Israr Shah.
