KARACHI: Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has arrested a medical officer in Mirpurkhas for allegedly tampering with the autopsy report of a doctor killed in a suspected extrajudicial police shooting after being accused of blasphemy, the agency said on Wednesday.
The arrest is part of an ongoing probe into the killing of Dr. Shahnawaz Kunbhar, a physician who was shot dead in what authorities initially described as a police encounter, but which was later proven by a high-level police inquiry to have been a staged killing while he was in custody.
The FIA said in a statement the police officials implicated in the case were investigated on charges of murder, terrorism and torture.
“The FIA Mirpurkhas has carried out a major operation and arrested medico-legal officer Dr. Muntazir Mehdi,” the agency said in a statement.
“The arrested suspect is accused of concealing evidence of torture in the post-mortem report,” it added. “He was taken into custody in Mirpurkhas, and investigations have begun.”
The statement said further arrests were expected as part of the probe, and all available resources were being used to track down those involved.
Dr. Kunbhar, a government doctor in Sindh’s Umerkot district, was accused of sharing blasphemous content on social media in September 2024, though he denied the charge and said that his account had been hacked.
After facing threats from religious groups, he went into hiding but was later arrested. A day after being taken into custody, police claimed he was killed in an exchange of fire while allegedly trying to escape.
Rights groups and his family dismissed the police version, however, alleging he was tortured and executed in custody. A subsequent inquiry by the Sindh Human Rights Commission found that Kunbhar had been killed in a staged encounter, and his body bore signs of severe torture.
The case sparked protests across Sindh, with civil society and legal activists demanding accountability.
The incident also brought Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws under renewed scrutiny, with rights organizations calling for legal reforms to prevent their misuse and protect the accused from vigilante violence.
The FIA said its investigation into police officers involved in the case was ongoing, and efforts to apprehend all those responsible were underway.
