Court-ordered exhumation carried out in Surjani Town teen death case

KARACHI: The body of 18-year-old Misbah was exhumed on Saturday from a graveyard in New Karachi’s Sector 6 under a court order, as legal proceedings continued in a case involving allegations that she died after violence by her husband in Surjani Town’s Saif-ul-Mari Goth.

The exhumation was conducted under the supervision of a judicial magistrate of District West. A medical board headed by a medical legal officer, along with Police Surgeon Dr Sumiya Syed and her team, collected samples from the body for forensic examination.

Dr Sumiya said the samples had been sent for analysis and that the cause of death would be established after the forensic report was received. She also said initial medico-legal observations had pointed to certain signs, but added that those details could not be shared at this stage.

According to the victim family’s lawyer, Tahir Janjua Advocate, no postmortem had been conducted earlier because the family was allegedly afraid after threats from the accused, identified as Shehryar Butt. He said the suspect had warned the family of serious consequences if they pursued the matter. Misbah’s brother, Usman, said the family had initially struggled to secure police cooperation, but that the police response improved considerably after the case received media attention.