‘Exhumation of Aamir Liaquat’s body, autopsy to be an exercise in futility’

A sessions court on Thursday extended until August 16 its stay order against the exhumation of the late Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNA and television host Dr Aamir Liaquat Hussain’s body for a medical examination.

On July 6, Additional Sessions Judge-II (East) Ghulam Mustafa Laghari had suspended the operation of the June 18 order of a judicial magistrate that allowed a citizen’s plea for the exhumation of Hussain’s body to ascertain the actual cause of his death.

The court had given the stay order on a plea filed by children of the late lawmaker, Dua-e-Aamir and Ahmed Aamir, who assailed the magistrate’s order and requested the judge to set aside it.

When the matter came up for hearing before Judge Laghari on Thursday, Hussain’s former wife Bushra Iqbal and daughter Dua-e-Aamir, along with their lawyer Zia Ahmed Awan, as well as state counsel Muhammad Younus, turned up in the court.

The judge adjourned the hearing until August 16 with a direction for the applicants’ counsel to submit all the relevant document to back up their contention by the next date of hearing. During the course of the hearing, Awan argued that the magistrate had no power to overrule the decision of his link judge, notwithstanding his order was legal or otherwise. A link judge is deputed to entertain urgent matters of a court in the absence of its presiding officer, he explained.

“The magistrate, while entertaining the application filed by Abdul Ahad, bitterly failed to understand that his court had become functus officio in the said matter as his link judge has already allowed the petitioners [children of Hussain] to bury the body of the deceased; therefore, the application should have been dismissed and in case of any grievance, the citizen should have approached the appellate forum,” he contended.

The counsel claimed that neither the family of the deceased nor the police found any evidence arousing suspicion as to the cause of his death. Hussain was buried on June 10 and more than two months have elapsed since, he said, adding that according to medical science his body might have decomposed by now, rendering the exhumation and autopsy an exercise in futility.

On June 18, Judicial Magistrate East Wazeer Hussain Memon had ordered exhumation of Hussain’s body for an autopsy observing that the cause of his death was still uncertain.