Brother’s fight for justice

LONDON: British-Pakistani businessman Jawad Sohrab Malik has issued a defiant yet heartfelt appeal for justice in the murder case of his brother Fahad Malik at his third assassination anniversary.

Jawad Sohrab Malik has reminded that his brother was killed by a criminal syndicate who, if not punished for its crimes, could unleash many more deaths and destructions, encouraged by the weakness of the system and the corrupt elements within the system helping the killers for petty gains.

Several British Pakistani parliamentarians who have repeatedly issued calls for justice to Pakistani authorities have supported his appeal and the issue was raised in the British Parliament during a hearing of the powerful Home Affairs Select Committee. Former Tory Cabinet Minister Sayeeda Warsi Labour MPs Naz Shah, Khalid Mahmood and social justice activist Jibran Nasir have supported the campaign for justice on social media in their statement.

Raja Arshad Mahmood, Noman Khokhar and Raja Hashim Khan were arrested on charges of murder and have been in prison ever since. The courts have rejected their bail attempts and the case is in final stages, a judgement expected in few weeks.

For Jawad Malik personally, this has been a personal crusade for justice, requiring tremendous courage and strength of character to take on a powerful mafia known in the capital for its connections at the right places and the immunity it enjoyed over decades.

A few years older than Jawad, Fahad Malik was a young and promising Barrister who returned to Pakistan leaving behind a lucrative job and businesses to make Pakistan a better place. When he was killed while performing his professional duty as a lawyer, the gangsters were comfortable in the knowledge that they will be able to twist long arm of the law yet again but they were mistaken.

In the poignant message, Jawad points out what he has been up against and how challenging it has been for him to fight for something that should have been a responsibility of the state.

The London-educated businessman and lawyer says in the video: “Three years ago my brother Barrister Fahad Malik was killed in Islamabad. Three years on, the fight for justice remains as effective and intense as it always was. Those who killed my brother are part of a criminal syndicate. They have used every trick in the book in three years to delay the course of justice. They will continue to use the same old tricks in order to delay the justice. The loss to my family is absolute. My brother will never come back.”

Jawad Malik mounted a strong challenge to tactics and manoeuvres of the murder accused and the elaborate supporting criminal network that has always supported acts of criminality in the federal capital and beyond with impunity.

Jawad has been able to get some of the best lawyers of Pakistan to plead his case for justice but the sympathisers of the killers have tried every trick to thwart the course of justice and fair play.

Not taking any chances, Jawad Malik has on the legal team some of the most sought after legal names of the country: Faisal Siddiqui, Khawaja Naveed, Akram Qureshi and famed Khawaja Harris. Renowned human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir was also part of the legal team until her death.

For almost every day of three years, he has led the defence team in the most robust manner in challenging and thwarting the manoeuvres of the three killers who remain behind the bars despite several attempts to come out.

Jawad Malik has cause to be worried and therefore extra vigilant because Raja Arshed, one of the three killers, was arrested from the Torkhan Border, while fleeing to Afghanistan and could do the same if freed again.

For Jawad Sohrab Malik, there has been a heavy price to pay for the extraordinary fight, single-handedly. He has faced threats and intimidation from the mafia protecting the killers for their own reasons. None of this stopped him for a moment. He warns that if justice not done today there will be more killings tomorrow.

He says in the video: “If we don’t ensure that justice is done - and seen to be done - in the case of my brother, there will be more such tragedies. There will be more murders and lives will be taken away with impunity by these terrorists.”

Jawad Sohrab Malik says in the video message: “The killers of my brother are getting a lot of help. I want to tell their facilitators that you are equally responsible and complicit in the crime. Like the three killers, you have blood on your hands. I want you to introspect, I want you to feel what it will be like for you if, god forbid, you had to pick up a dead body of a family member, like your brother or son or someone you loved delay. Imagine the pain. Imagine the curses you will get from the victims, from mothers and sisters of the victims for your crime.”

He goes on to make a strong point for the wider society that standing up for the right cause is not personal and anyone can fall into the same category at anytime, seeking justice. “I want to inform you again. This is not just my fight. This fight is for all of you, for all of us to fight together. We have to raise this voice together so that it doesn’t happen again to anyone else, not to anyone else’s family. I request all of you to speak out against the murder of my brother. I hope that we will get justice soon, Inshallah. I appeal to the justice system to help us get justice as soon as possible.”