ISLAMABAD: The body of Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif, who was shot dead by police in Kenya, has been repatriated to his country and is likely to arrive at the Islamabad airport later tonight, confirmed the foreign office in a brief statement issued Monday night.

Sharif, a hugely popular talk show host at ARY News from which he resigned in August, was of late a harsh critic of the current ruling coalition and army and fled the country in August after remarks by a politician on a news bulletin he hosted were deemed “seditious” by the country’s media regulator and government.

Sharif was already at the time facing a slew of court cases related to charges of sedition. He was believed to have been in the United Arab Emirates since he left Pakistan in August and had recently traveled to Kenya from the Emirates.

“The mortal remains of late Arshad Sharif are being repatriated from Nairobi tonight on board flight QR 1342 departing Nairobi at 1:25 AM for Doha,” the foreign office said. “Onward flight QR 0632 will leave Doha at 1935 hours (25 Oct) and arrive Islamabad 01:05 hours tomorrow night.”

The statement added that the Pakistani high commissioner in Kenya, Saqlain Syeda, was at the Nairobi airport overseeing the arrangements.

Prior to that, the country’s information minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb, said the postmortem of the deceased journalist had been performed in a hospital in Nairobi. She maintained the process to bring Sharif’s body back to Pakistan had been expedited after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif telephoned Kenyan President William Ruto and requested a “fair and transparent investigation.”

“He promised all-out help including fast-tracking the process of return of the body to Pakistan,” the prime minister said in a Twitter post.

In a statement released on Monday, Kenya’s inspector general of police said Sharif’s car was shot at after a circular was issued for a stolen car. The journalist’s vehicle did not stop at a police barricade set up for the search of the missing car and was thus shot at, fatally wounding Sharif.

Kenya’s Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), a civilian watchdog, has started an investigation into Sharif’s killing, IPOA’s chairwoman Ann Makori told journalists at a news conference on Monday.

“There’s an alleged police killing of a Pakistani national at Tinga market, Kajiado county, last evening. Our rapid response team has already been dispatched,” she said.

The government has also instructed attorney general Ashtar Ausaf Ali to write a letter to the Kenyan government to establish legal contact.

Meanwhile, a media report quoted Sharif’s wife as saying she advised her husband to seek asylum abroad but he refused.

“Arshad was receiving threats for the last six months because of which he decided to leave the country,” Javeria Siddique, a journalist herself, told Independent Urdu.

“When [I] asked Arshad to file a request for asylum, he said ‘Pakistan is my country, I live and die there.’ He said he would return to Pakistan in a few days.”

Siddique said she last spoke to her husband around 10pm Pakistani time on Sunday and later did not receive answers to her text messages.

“I thought he might be busy with work. After a while, his number was switched off too,” she said.

“His friend from Nairobi called at 2am and informed he had an accident. Then after a while informed that [he] had been shot in the head and murdered.”

Sharif’s lawyer Shoaib Razzaq said he had called on the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to form a judicial commission to investigate why the anchorman had left Pakistan and what he had been doing in Kenya at the time of his murder.

“We have asked the [Islamabad High] court in our appeal to form a judicial commission to dig out the circumstances which lead to his killing, why he had to leave the country [Pakistan],” Razzaq told Arab News over the phone.

The court ordered the secretaries of the interior and foreign ministries to immediately meet Sharif’s family after an application seeking a probe into the matter was filed, Pakistan’s Express Tribune paper reported.

A family member of Sharif’s who declined to be named said his UAE visa had expired and he traveled to Kenya by his own choice.

Sharif was also refused a visa for the United Kingdom, his lawyer said, adding that he had planned to file a protective transit bail request for Sharif today, Monday, but instead filed a plea for the early repatriation of his body.

“I was in contact with him on a daily basis and the last time we talked on the phone was yesterday [Sunday],” Razzaq said. “He always said he wanted to come back as he was missing Pakistan … He asked me yesterday to get his protective transit bail so that he can come back home.”

The family was “completely broken” over the tragic death, the lawyer said, and it was hard to console them.

“I got this news at 2am and went to Sharif’s home as I knew Sharif for the last 27 years and had family relations with them,” he said. “His daughter is doing an internship at my law firm and his elder son went to Canada for studies last month.”