Karachi police obtain Mir Raza's crypto trading records for last 4 years: official

KARACHI: Karachi police on Wednesday said they have obtained the crypto trading records of 25-year-old businessman Mir Raza Ali, who was found dead with a gunshot wound in Gulistan-i-Jauhar in July.

A police official, wishing to remain anonymous, told Dawn that police obtained a four-year record through the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) of Ali’s involvement in “futures trading” of cryptocurrency on trading platform Binance.

“It showed that he had been doing futures trading for the last four years,” the official added.

On Monday, Ali’s friend Abdul Hasem, appearing before a judicial commission formed to probe the circumstances and possible negligence around Ali’s murder, had also said that he and Ali used to do crypto trading.

However, Hasem said he had left the trading after sustaining losses while Ali was doing well.

The single-member judicial commission, chaired by SHC’s Justice Omar Sial, has been holding regular hearings.

Last month, police had sought the NCCIA’s expertise to retrieve Ali’s “digital records/WhatsApp account details” to ascertain anything suspicious.

The case so far

Ali’s body was found a day after he went missing on July 28. Since then, the case has been mired in controversy, with the deceased’s family accusing the police of trying to bury the facts, as the police initially attempted to build the case around suicide.

However, days after the recovery of Ali’s body on July 29, Karachi Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed had told Geo News that the post-mortem findings in the case had raised several questions, as some observations in the report did not appear to match the available photographs.

On August 6, a Karachi court took up an application by Ali’s father, allowed the exhumation of his body, ordered the formation of a medico-legal board for the purpose and directed that a second autopsy of Ali’s body be conducted.

The Sindh health department then constituted an eight-member board, with police surgeon Dr Syed as the convener. However, in the early hours of August 7, the board was reconstituted through an order issued by the director general of the Sindh health department.

While Dr Syed remained the convener of the new five-member board, its members were changed.

But Ali’s family rejected the new board, which also resulted in the deferment of the planned exhumation on Friday. Meanwhile, the counsel for Ali’s family, Nasir, accused the authorities of trying to bury the facts.

The Sindh government then restored the original medical board, following which Ali’s body was exhumed on August 8.

A day later, the Sindh inspector general of police’s (IG) office notified the reconstitution of the investigating team probing Ali’s death, while Karachi Additional IG Azad Khan transferred the investigation into Ali’s murder to Zaman Town police station from Ferozabad Police Station, where the case was registered under charges of kidnapping.

The order for the probe team’s reconstitution also showed that a murder charge had been added to the first information report.

The same day, the Sindh government decided to seek a judicial commission for the case’s investigation, only to defer the plan a day later after Ali’s family said they had made no such demand and had faith in the new investigation team.

On Aug 19, Ali’s parents, Mir Hussain and Mariam Hussain, wrote to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, seeking his “direct supervision of the murder investigation”. They also urged the chief minister to order an investigation and departmental inquiry into the previous investigation team and immediately suspend the officers involved.

The provincial government acknowledged the letter and announced the decision on Aug 23 to form a judicial commission to determine whether the investigation in the case was being conducted impartially and to investigate the circumstances surrounding Ali’s death.

However, the counsel for Ali’s family approached the SHC, objecting to the provincial government’s decision to form a judicial commission and seeking the formation of an independent and multi-agency JIT “comprising officers who have had no previous involvement in the case”.

On Sept 2, the SHC dismissed that petition filed by Ali’s family, observing that constituting such a body was the “prerogative of the government”.

Meanwhile, the final report of Ali’s second post-mortem for the Mir Raza Ali murder case confirmed that his death was caused by a gunshot wound to the back.

“Death occurred due to cardiac rupture consequent to perforating firearm injury of the chest,” the report stated, adding that the entry wound was on the posterior thorax (back) and the exit wound on the anterior thorax (front of the chest).

“The findings are inconsistent with suicide as the manner of death,” it confirmed.