Arshad Sharif’s mother has asked the Supreme Court to appoint a joint investigation team (JIT) to look into her son’s murder and interview those who have claimed to know who plotted the renowned journalist’s murder, including the leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The mother of Sharif petitioned the Supreme Court in a Civil Miscellaneous Application (CMA), claiming that Pakistan should be the JIT’s first investigation site because it was “where the conspiracy to kill my son was hatched.” It is a matter of record that so many witnesses have come out and admitted to saying that about those responsible for the conspiracy and the murder.
She claimed that six people—the PTI president, the former ministers Faisal Vawda and Murad Saeed, the media tycoon Salman Iqbal, and the journalist Imran Riaz Khan—were required to participate in the probe to gather evidence against the actual offenders. The petitioner claimed that neither she nor her attorney had access to the JIT’s report nor the fact-finding report and that they had been “kept in the dark about the persons who joined the investigation of the case.” In what was deemed to be a case of mistaken identity, Kenyan police shot and murdered Sharif, a recipient of the Pride of Performance award and a specialist in investigative journalism, on October 23, 2022.
On December 7, 2022, Pakistan’s Chief Justice (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial took suo motu notice of the “brutal killing of a senior journalist.” The government informed a five-judge court presided over by CJP Bandial on December 8 that a JIT had been formed to look into the killing. The special JIT was headed by DIG Awais Ahmed of the Islamabad Police and included Muhammad Aslam from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Murtaza Afzal from Military Intelligence (MI), Waqaruddin Syed from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and Sajid Kayani from the Intelligence Bureau (IB). The bench had voiced its displeasure with the investigation team’s pace last month. It had stated that it would pursue other options if the JIT did not make significant progress by the next hearing date, June 13.
CJP Bandial had commented on the JIT’s progress report, stating that the JIT had gotten started just one day before the case’s hearing. If the JIT had gathered any evidence up to that point, Justice Sayyed Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi had inquired.
“We have severe concerns about the pace at which the JIT is doing its inquiry. And we are serious about looking into this situation. Mansoor Awan, the attorney general for Pakistan (AGP), had previously informed the court that the JIT had received a letter from the United Arab Emirates on April 11 and had responded to it on April 29. According to other sources, Sharif was purportedly asked to leave the Gulf state by the UAE authorities after fleeing Pakistan for the UAE out of fear of being arrested.
Later, after relocating to Kenya, he was killed. Justice Naqvi noted that the JIT had given the Kenyan government access to 20 mobile phone numbers, and he asked the JIT to provide the authorities with the WhatsApp messages associated with these numbers.
“From where did the JIT obtain these numbers?” The fact-finding report was previously produced by a two-person team, and the AGP notified the bench that these numbers were cited in it. The JIT would depart for the UAE and Kenya on May 17, he added, adding that “all these phone numbers belong to the people who were present at the crime scene [on Oct 23].”
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