Court seeks ‘missing’ USB containing videos in Ranjhani murder case

An anti-terrorism court on Friday ordered police to bring a USB flash disk containing videos of the murder of Irshad Ranjhani, an activist of the Jiye Sindh Tehreek, on the next date of hearing.

Ranjhani’s brother Khalid told the court he had given the investigation officer the flash disk. However, all sides expressed ignorance about the disk after which police were ordered to bring the disk to the court.

The court was requested to declare a key witness hostile who allegedly changed his statement. Abdul Raheem Shah, Union Council 5 chairman in Bhains Colony, along with some police officers was held for the murder of Ranjhani. Shah claimed that Ranjhani was trying to rob him when he fired shots in self-defence.

An ambulance driver deposed before the ATC-XIII judge that on February 2 last year, he received information about a casualty near the Fast University and as he proceeded, he saw a crowd at a U-turn of Bhains Colony. “A person was lying injured on the ground but people restrained me from taking him to hospital until the arrival of police.”

After police arrived, he said the injured was taken to a police station first to record his statement, but since the injured was not in a position to record the statement, he was then sent to hospital. “Two policemen were escorting me in the ambulance when two armed men stopped us, opened the back door of the vehicle and two fired shots at Ranjhani.”

The driver said the motorcyclists appeared to be 27 or 28 years who fled after firing shots and that he remembered their faces. He said Ranjhani was shot in the face and the head. He said after the shooting, he proceeded to hospital but Ranjhani succumbed to his wounds on the way. He said police recorded his statements thrice on different dates and he could confirm that Shah was not the shooter.

The charge sheet reads that Shah did not let anyone shift Ranjhani to hospital until the arrival of police and sub-inspector Riaz Hussain further delayed the treatment by taking the injured to the police station instead. Hearing the deposition, the prosecutor and the counsel for the complainant argued that the witnesses had deviated from his previous statement under Section 161 (Examination of witnesses by police) of the Code of Criminal Procedure and had nominated Shah as the shooter. They pleaded that the witness should be declared hostile. The court put off the decision on this till July 28.

Meanwhile, brother of the deceased, Khalid, deposed that he was in Dadu when a friend in Karachi called him to inform about Ranjhani’s murder. He said the friend told him that Shah, his son Hassan, and two of their gunmen were in a Vigo that hit Ranjhani’s motorcycle. “Afterwards, Shah alighted from the vehicle and fired straight shots at my brother who was lying on the ground.”

Khalid said Shah at gunpoint restrained people from rushing the injured to hospital and as police arrived, he “fired two more shots at Ranjhani in their presence”. He said the next day some videos went viral on social media in which Shah was “clearly seen pointing his weapon at people urging medical facility for the injured”.

In the first video, he said his brother had injuries in the abdomen while in another video his brother had bullets wound on the mouth and in the head. Ranjhani was a nationalist political activist and had served as the JST’s Karachi president. According to his family, he had returned from Dubai recently to spend some time with them and was “murdered in cold blood”. Protests emerged in different parts of the province following the killing.