LARKANA/HYDERABAD: Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University (SMBBMU) vice chancellor Prof Dr Anila Atta-ur-Rehman, chairing a meeting of senior professors and administration officials, on Friday expressed her displeasure and indignation over the recent release of the laboratory report of Nosheen Kazmi, whose body was found hanging from the ceiling fan in her hostel room on Nov 24, 2021.

She was an MBBS fourth-year student of the Chandka Medical College.

The forensic and molecular biology laboratory for DNA testing, functioning at the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS), had done the test and released the report.

“Releasing the report at this juncture is an attempt to damage the institution’s reputation and also influencing the ongoing judicial inquiry into the incident. Without court orders, it’s unlawful to probe into the preserved samples of Nimirta [Chandani],” the meeting said.

Ms Chandani was a BDS final-year student of the Bibi Aseefa Dental College, Larkana, and she was also found dead in her hostel room on Sept 16, 2019.

Discussing legal side of the release of the medical report, a law consultant told the meeting that no lab could match samples of one case with another one

without seeking prior permission from court. The lab itself was not mandated to give any recommendations, he added.

The meeting noted that a judiciaal inquiry into the Nosheen Kazmi case was ordered on Jan 26, 2022 and release of this report just two days later reflected both “ill-intention on the part of the lab” and “an attempt to influence the judicial probe”. Under the legal procedure, a lab was supposed to send sealed report to police and court, it asserted.

It called for including LUMHS into the judicial inquiry which was in progress.

Deans of different departments, Prof Safdar Ali Shaikh, Prof Alam Ibrahim Siddiqui and Prof Dr Saeed Ahmed Shaikh; SMBBMU registrar Dr Syed Qararo Shah, Chandka Medical College principal Prof Dr Gulzar Shaikh, Bibi Aseefa Dental College principal Prof Dr Yusif Shah, forensic medicine expert Prof Dr Rasheed Pathan and histo-pathologist Dr Mohammed Wasif Saleem were among those who attended the meeting.

Meanwhile, Larkana SSP’s PRO on Friday confirmed receipt of Nosheen Kazmi’s lab report, and said that evidence including the latest DNA report had been sealed and would subsequently submitted in the court concerned.

The LUMHS lab report had reportedly suggested that the male DNA profiles in both cases matched and this showed that there could be a same person involved in both incidents.

Initial police investigations had declared the women’s death suicide cases but their families contested the findings and insisted that they were murdered. Civil society organisations, while holding street protests over the incidents soon after the incidents, believed that the women were made to commit suicide after they were blackmailed.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2022