A court has directed the senior superintendent of police (SSP) investigation (South) to appoint a “diligent police officer not below the rank of deputy superintendent of police (DSP)” to carry out an investigation into the death of a young man who died after falling from a high-rise in DHA.
Syed Muhammad Ammar, Usman Ahmed, Owais, Uzair Ahmed, Ahmed Jamil and Syed Faaz were booked and arrested after the death of their 26-year-old friend, Adil Masood Khan, on July 31.
The investigating officer, Sub-Inspector Abdul Rahim, submitted the final charge sheet before Judicial Magistrate (South) Mazhar Ali under Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), requesting him to give the go-ahead to the trial of the accused persons for alleged manslaughter under Section 322 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
Announcing his decision on the charge sheet, the magistrate observed that the IO had not properly investigated the case; therefore, it needed to be investigated further. He noted that a prosecution witness, Syed Tahir Hussain Zaidi, administrative head of the residential project, in his statement recorded by the police under Section 161 of the CrPC, said that he, upon checking CCTV footage, found that Khan had fallen from the 17th floor of the building, but surprisingly the IO failed to collect the footage from him.
“The IO did not even bother to mention the name of PW [prosecution witness] Zaidi in the list of witnesses in the charge sheet,” he said. “It would not be out of place to mention here that the security system of the project must be above standard and there must be CCTV cameras covering each corner of the building, but IO has collected only CCTV footage of entry and exit of the accused persons,” Magistrate Ali pointed out.
“The IO didn’t bother to collect footage of other CCTV cameras covering the place of the incident from different angles.”
He maintained that the youth had allegedly fallen from the 17th floor, but the IO had not mentioned whether there was any obstruction between the floor and the ground where he fell as he suffered an injury in the right thigh.
“The entire case file is silent in respect of the posture, in which the dead body was found by the police, which is material fact of the case,” the magistrate remarked. Besides, he added, the IO had not mentioned the height of the balcony.
Masood, a resident of Gulistan-e-Jauhar, died after falling off the high-rise building near Do Darya under mysterious circumstances on the morning of July 31. In the final charge sheet, the IO stated that he couldn’t find any evidence to prove that the man was pushed off the residential building or the suspects held any grudge towards him as they had all come to the flat together before the incident. However, the suspects abandoned their friend after he fell and fled the scene. They neither shifted him to a hospital nor informed anybody about the incident, he added.
