KARACHI: In order to unravel the mystery surrounding the death of television personality and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker Dr Aamir Liaquat Hussain, a court allowed the plea seeking the exhumation and post-mortem examination of his body on Saturday.
Judicial Magistrate East Wazeer Hussain Memon directed the provincial health secretary to constitute a medical board and fix a date for the exhumation of the body. The station house officer (SHO) of the Brigade Police Station was told to make necessary arrangements in this regard.
After hearing arguments from both sides, the magistrate had reserved the verdict on the application filed by a citizen, Abdul Ahad, seeking the autopsy of Amir Liaquat to determine the circumstances that led to his death.
Ahmed Aamir and Dua Aamir, the deceased’s children, turned up in the court and opposed the plea. They argued that the applicant had no locus standi to file such an application and if the plea was allowed, the exhumation of the body would disgrace the grave of their father, which they didn’t desire at any cost.
The magistrate recalled that after the family’s refusal, the body was externally examined by a medico-legal officer before the burial. The MLO in a report had opined that nothing could be said about the cause of the death on the basis of external examination.
There is no doubt that the legal heirs are the custodians of the grave, but when there is suspicion as to the circumstances surrounding the death of Liaquat and there are chances of the commission of an offence or otherwise, it is the basic scheme of criminal law that the criminal machinery has to be set into motion to unearth the behind-scene fact, he said.
Therefore, Memon went on, the Section 176(2) of the CrPC does not place any embargo of locus standi to approach the court for the exhumation of a dead body. Citing a case, he said the magistrate on his own accord or on information or any stranger can file an application to ascertain the actual cause of a person’s death.
“It is crystal clear that the cause of death of deceased is still uncertain which itself has raised question on the death, either it is natural or unnatural and could only be ascertained after the exhumation of the dead body and its examination,” the magistrate said in the five-page-long verdict read.
“In the given facts and circumstances of the case at hand and particularly in the light of guidelines settled by the honourable superior courts on the subject, I am of the considered view that disinterment of the body of deceased Dr. Aamir Liaquat Hussain is inevitable to determine the actual cause of his death in order to remove suspicions and clouds of doubts over his death,” he ruled, allowing the application.
Earlier, the applicant said that the mysterious and sudden death of the TV host and politician at his residence in Karachi on June 9 had raised “reasonable suspicion among the citizens of Karachi that he had been murdered over some property dispute”.
“In the presence of grave suspicions and doubts, this court has an absolute jurisdiction to order the respondents to hold disinterment, exhumation and post-mortem of the deceased to discover, unearth and ascertain the actual cause of death of Aamir Liaquat Hussain under sections 174 and 176 of the Criminal Procedure Code [CrPC],” he contended
Hussain was laid to rest on the premises of Abdullah Shah Ghazi's shrine in Clifton last week. His last rites had been delayed by a dispute over the post-mortem examination. The police had refused to hand over his body to the family and insisted on carrying out an autopsy to ascertain the cause of his sudden death. However, his children refused the post-mortem examination.
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