UMERKOT: A special medical board exhumed the body of Dr Shahnawaz Kunbhar, who was accused of blasphemy and killed in what was believed to be a staged encounter by Mirpurkhas police on Sept 19, and collected samples for chemical analysis amid tight security arrangements at Janhero village, 17km from here on Tuesday.

The board consisting of Dr Wasim, acting police surgeon of Hyderabad (head of the board), AMS (medico-legal) of Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) Hyderabad, Dr Tahir Qureshi; forensic expert of LUMHS, Prof Dr Wahid Nahiyoon, pathologist Dr Rahil Khan and other doctors collected 13 samples of the body, conducted X-ray of the entire corpse in the presence of judicial magistrate Aamir Rajput and reburied the body afterwards.

Members of the board told media persons that the samples taken from Dr Shahnawaz’s body would be sent to a relevant laboratory for chemical analysis. Their results were expected to be released within a month, they said.

Umerkot SSP Uzair Ahmed Memon, who supervised security during the exhumation and prevented journalists from approaching the gravesite, said the investigation would now move forward in the light of post-mortem report.

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Dr Shahnawaz’s family and civil society were eagerly awaiting findings of the autopsy, which might greatly help the investigation of the case.

The exhumation was ordered by a local court in the wake of recommendations by Hyderabad police surgeon and Director General of Health to investigate claims of torture, custodial death, staged encounter and the burning of the body.

If the findings confirmed torture and death in custody, more individuals involved in the case should be included in the FIR, said the father of Dr Shahnawaz.

Dr Shahnawaz’s family had called for a thorough investigation into the murder of their loved one and stressed that the scope of the inquiry must be widened if allegations that the encounter was staged after murdering Dr Shahnawaz somewhere else to cover up the cause of death, were found to be true.

The family suspected the motive behind the burning of the body too appeared to have been an attempt to destroy evidence of torture and obscure true cause of death.

The complainant in Dr Kunbhar’s murder case, Ibrahim Kunbhar, said that they were acting cautiously and they would trust the process for now despite the fact that the family was not taken into confidence or informed beforehand [about the exhumation]. “It was only after the teams arrived in the village that we found out about the exhumation,” he said.

He added: “Let’s wait and see what happens next. If we suspect anything wrong, we will raise a strong protest.”

Social media is rife with different claims about the manner of Dr Shahnawaz’s death, which suggest that he was tortured to death somewhere else and then the encounter was staged to cover up the actual cause of his death. The body too had to be burnt in a frenetic attempt to destroy evidence of torture, suspected some netizens.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2024