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Omer Asghar’s ‘suicide’

Questions still unanswered

By Sarfaraz Ahmed

KARACHI: Strong suspicion has arisen that Omer Asghar Khan, who was found dead at his in-laws’ home on Tuesday, was murdered.

According to police and the Sindh government, the chemical report to determine whether Omer Asghar Khan had taken sedatives before his death, will be finalised next week. If the report shows that he did in fact take sedatives, there could be a possibility that he had been forced to swallow them, and then hanged.

However, the roles of the police and the government, and of the in-laws, have raised serious questions. The mark of ligature (the point where strangulation supposedly occurred) was too thin for that produced by bed-sheets used by the victim, as the family gave doctors to understand. The family also said they had removed the sheets before they laid the body on the bed. “It was hardly 2 to 3 cm,” a well-placed medical source said of the mark. “It should have been over 6 cm if a pair of bed-sheets were used for strangulation.” More important, the bed-sheets were not produced to the forensic experts at the time of post-mortem on the body.

The main question relates to the assumed method of suicide. The distance between the ceiling and the ground is about 11 feet. The height of the seat of the revolving office chair is about two feet. The fan’s blades were less than two feet below the ceiling. Omer Asghar Khan’s height is stated to have been 5 feet 10 inches, and he weighed over 70 kg. If the height of the chair’s seat, the victim’s height and the level of the fan’s blades are taken into account, there is the question of how he managed to hang himself. It is not clear yet whether he is supposed to have placed the chair on the bed. The entire scene of the tragedy is sketchy.

Also, the flight to carry the body to Islamabad was booked much before the post-mortem was performed. And why did the government not form a medical board, given the importance of the case? According to one of the doctors, the alleged suicide note was found on an envelope. But the pen used to write it was missing. It is intriguing that Capital City police chief Asad Jahangir declared the cause to be suicide, while the post-mortem is still under way. Doctors also said the neck bone was not broken.

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