HYDERABAD: The complainant of the May 27 murder of a 40-year-old woman in Hyderabad’s rural taluka was arrested and eventually remanded in police custody after investigators reached the conclusion that he himself had killed her to implicate five persons -- one side in a land dispute -- in the murder case.

Ali Jan Jamali, the complainant, had claimed himself to be husband of victim Ms Zulaikha. The FIR (No 21/24) was registered at the Chalgari police station under Sections 302, 147, 148, 149, 114, 504 and 337(H2) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). Jamali had nominated Ghulam Murtaza Samoo, Manthar, Dodo, Babu Mallah and Gullan as the suspects.

Jamali had stated that he was a peasant of Haji Umaid Ali Samoo. He had claimed that his wife, Ms Zulaikha, was killed by Manthar at the instance of Ghulam Murtaza Samoo.

An initial probe into the matter found that Umaid Ali Samoo had a dispute with his cousin Ghulam Murtaza Samoo over a registered revenue land in the riverine area.

Ghulam Murtaza had been pursuing the issue with the area’s notables and police since April to get the dispute resolved but in vain.

JIT finds he falsely claimed being her husband, tried to shift blame to one side in land dispute

After registration of the FIR, Ghulam Murtaza approached IGP Ghulam Nabi Memon and told him that the woman was actually killed by complainant Ali Jan Jamali himself at the behest of Umaid Ali, who wanted to usurp his and his family’s land.

He urged the IGP to get the matter probed by a joint investigation team (JIT).

The IGP asked Hyderabad DIG Tariq Dharejo to form the JIT and include in it DSP Siraj Lashari, who has a reputation of being an honest officer. The JIT was formed with SP Headquarters Shahzeb Chachar being its head.

After vetting Jamali’s statements in the FIR and examining circumstantial evidence, the JIT finally established that Ms Zulaikha was murdered by Ali Jan Jamali with intention to implicate Ghulam Murtaza and his family members in the murder case.

Hyderabad SSP Dr Farrukh Ali said Jamali had named Manthar as the prime suspect. He pointed out that only one spent bullet casing was found at the scene of the offence, probably at a distance of just three to four feet from the victim’s body. “I had a gut feeling from day one that neither the woman had killed himself nor was she killed by [Umaid’s] rivals in the land dispute,” said the SSP. He said circumstantial evidence did not back Jamali’s account. The JIT concluded that Jamali had murdered her to implicate nominated suspects in the case to help Umaid grab the land.

He said that Ms Zulaikha’s father came from Shikarpur but he even did not know that his daughter had been murdered. Quoting from the probe report, the SSP said that the woman was kidnapped by Jamali in Shikarpur.

When Jamali was detained, he insisted that he would spill the beans once Manthar was produced before him, the SSP said, adding that accordingly, when the prime suspect was brought before him along with several other persons for identification, Jan Jamali picked out a wrong person as Manthar. That’s how everything was sorted out, the police officer said.

Shahzeb Chahchar, who has now been posted as Additional SP in Shikarpur, told Dawn over phone that when he interrogated Jamali, he tried to corroborate his allegations with the evidence. “I found out that an FIR was lodged against Jamali in Shikarpur district about Zulaikha’s kidnapping on the complaint of her husband, Zahid Hussain, on June 6, 2022,” he said. He said Jamali had disappeared from the area.

According to Ghulam Murtaza, Zahid had avoided coming to Hyderabad but Zulaikha’s father, Nazeer, did turn up before police and stated that she was his daughter and that she was kidnapped by Ali Jan Jamali. Ghulam Murtaza said he and his family still continued efforts to get the matter resolved amicably through a notable, Mohammad Thebo. However, he said, the other side did not abide by the agreement reached at the first sitting [with Thebo] as it did not withdraw from his land.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2024