Permission sought from Mirpurkhas judge to exhume Dr Maha’s body

The SP Investigation South has written a letter to a district and sessions judge of Mirpurkhas, seeking permission to exhume the body of Dr Maha Ali Shah, who allegedly committed suicide in her Defence home on August 18.

On Friday, a two-member investigation team left for Mirpurkhas, where Dr Maha has been buried, to exhume her body after court permission. The court will appoint a judicial magistrate to supervise the exhumation process in the presence of a team of doctors.

DIG South Javed Akbar Riaz confirmed that the Karachi police had sought permission from a Mirpurkhas judge to exhume the body of Dr Maha.

‘Go to relevant court’

A district and sessions court dismissed an application seeking permission to exhume the body of Dr Maha Shah, who allegedly committed suicide at her home, for another postmortem examination to ascertain the “actual cause of her death”.

The police have booked her friends, Dr Irfan Qureshi, Junaid Khan and Waqas Hasan, and two others on a complaint of her father, Syed Asif Ali, who alleged that they abused her daughter and poisoned her, which took her life.

Earlier, the police said the young doctor practising at a private hospital in Clifton had allegedly committed suicide by shooting herself at her home in Defence Housing Authority on August 18.

The investigating officer, sub-inspector Sharafat, moved an application before the South district and sessions’ judge, seeking permission to exhume body of the victim for a second postmortem examination.

Sharafat maintained that the opinion of the doctors in the first postmortem report showed conflicts. He said the second postmortem examination was necessary, as apparently someone else shot Dr Maha Shah in the head instead of the victim shooting herself to death.

The judge ruled that the body of the victim had been buried in Mirpurkhas; therefore, it was beyond the jurisdiction the court to pass any order with regard to exhuming body of the victim.

The judge dismissed the application, observing that the IO was at liberty to move such an application before the relevant court for exhuming the victim’s body for a fresh postmortem examination if he so desired. Earlier, a South district’s judicial magistrate had granted bail to detained suspect Dr Irfan Qureshi till the filing of the final investigation report by the investigating officer, and ordered his release against a surety of Rs500,000.