Court reserves order on A-class report as family wants Dr Birbal case investigated by CTD

A court on Thursday reserved its order on an A-class report filed by the investigating officer in Dr Birbal Genani murder case.

Dr Birbal, former senior Karachi Metropolitan Corporation official and eye specialist, was shot dead by armed motorcyclists on the night of March 30 in Garden. His assistant Quratul Ain had also suffered gunshot wounds in the attack.

As the case came up for hearing before the judicial magistrate (South) on Thursday, both previous and incumbent investigating officers of the case were in attendance.

The magistrate reserved his order after hearing arguments of the complainant’s lawyer on the A-class report filed by the previous IO, who recommended the court to dispose of the case under A-class, meaning the killers of Dr Birbal were untraceable or unknown.

Advocate Salahuddin Panhwar contended that the previous IO, Zafar Iqbal, failed to properly investigate the case as he made no serious efforts to trace the culprits behind the doctor’s murder.

“After the passage of over three months, the IO filed a one-and-a-half page ‘A-class’ report, reproducing the entire FIR and mentioning whatever little progress he made in the last three lines, which said he sent empties found at the crime scene to a lab for forensic analysis,” he lamented.

The counsel said that if personal enmity or grudge were not the possible motive of the murder, then the case didn’t fall within the jurisdiction of an ordinary court but rather within the jurisdiction of an anti-terrorism court.

He requested the magistrate to return the case file to the investigating officer so he could file it along with progress reports before the administrative judge of the ATCs and case be investigated by the Counter-Terrorism Department.

The FIR was registered under sections 302 (premeditated murder), 324 (attempted murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of Dr Birbal’s brother Revo Genani at the Garden police station.