Medico-legal board for exhumation of Mir Raza Ali's body abruptly reconstituted

Why This Matters

Key context: <p>KARACHI: The medical board tasked with exhuming the body of Institute of Business Administration (IBA) graduate Mir Raza Ali has been reconstituted, it emerged on Friday.</p> <p>A day earlier, a Karachi court <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/2021005/karachi-court-allows-exhumation-of-mir-raza-alis-body-amid-controversy-over-autopsy">allowed</a> the exhumation on an application filed by Ali’s father, wherein the court directed the police surgeon and the Sindh health secretary to constitute a medico-legal board for the exhumation of Ali’s body “at the earliest possible date and time”.</p> <p>The Sindh health department then constituted the eight-member board, with Karachi Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed — who had raised several questions about the post-mortem report — as the convener.</p> <p>Prof Dr Naseem Ahmed of DUHS, Dr Farah Waseem of JSMU, Amir Hassan Khan of CPLC, Dr Sirichand Additional police surgeon, Dr Kamran Khan and Dr Daniyal Mirza of JPMC, and Dr Mohammed Yaseen, the admin in-charge of the police surgeon office, were the other members of the board.</p> <p>However, a new order has been issued by the Directorate General Health Services Sindh Hyderabad. The notification, a copy of which is available with <em>Dawn</em>, said that the board had been reconstituted to conduct the exhumation and medico-legal examination of the deceased.</p> <p>While Dr Syed remained the convener of the new board, its members were changed to Prof Dr Zakiuddin from DUHS, Prof Dr Kazi Akbar and Prof Dr Abid Hussain Chang from Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences and Hyderabad Police Surgeon Dr Waseem Khan.</p> <p>The family’s lawyer, Jibran Nasir, alleged on X that the Sindh government had “maliciously” changed the members of the board without any explanation.</p> <p>“The family expresses no consent for this new board and will not allow it to exhumate the body tomorrow morning and corrupt whatever evidence remains and it will be formally communicated to authorities,” he said, adding that the fresh notification would be challenged at the appropriate forum.</p> <figure class='media w-full w-full media-- media--embed media--uneven media--tweet' data-original-src='https://x.com/MJibranNasir/status/2085473392447398010'> <div class='media__item media__item--twitter '><span> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"> <a href="https://twitter.com/MJibranNasir/status/2085473392447398010"></a> </blockquote> </span></div> </figure> This development from dawn.com highlights ongoing changes in the sector.