KARACHI: Authorities in Pakistan’s Sindh province have set up a three-member committee to probe journalist Khawar Hussain’s death in the Sanghar district under mysterious circumstances, police said on Sunday.
Hussain’s body was recovered from his hometown of Sanghar outside a local restaurant on Hyderabad Road on Saturday night, according to police officials. The journalist sustained a gunshot wound to his head.
Police said the death appeared to be a suicide after they found a pistol clutched in Hussain’s hand at the site of the incident, local media reported. But the claim was widely rejected by Hussain’s friends and associates on social media.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah ordered a probe into the death, after which DIG Crime and Investigation Wing Amir Farooqi notified a three-member investigation committee on Sunday evening.
“The committee will do preliminary investigation and ascertain facts from all angles,” read a notification issued from Farooqi’s office.
“The complete report into the incident may be finalized in two days.”
The probe panel is headed by Azad Khan, additional inspector general of the Sindh counter-terrorism department (CTD), with DIG Karachi West Irfan Baloch and Sanghar SSP Abid Baloch as members.
Hussain was a Karachi-based correspondent for Dawn News. The news of his death drew condemnations from the Karachi Press Club and senior members of the Sindh government.
“Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has taken notice of the unnatural death of senior journalist Khawar Hussain in Sanghar,” a statement from Shah’s office said on Saturday.
“The chief minister has sought a report from the inspector general of police. The real cause of death must be determined through investigation.”
On Sunday, DIG Faisal Bashir Memon told Arab News the pistol clutched in Hussain’s hand at the time of his death belongs to the journalist who had been keeping it for personal safety.
“He parked his car and went to the restroom twice. According to the CCTV footage, he was alone. Khawar asked the hotel manager about the restroom, then returned to his car and sat inside. He stepped out of the car again and asked the watchman about the restroom. He went toward the restroom once more and then came back and sat in the car again,” Memon told Arab News.
“The CCTV camera was installed on the other side of the driver’s seat, and no one else was seen in the footage. The hotel manager later told the watchman to check if Khawar wanted to order something as he had been sitting [inside his car there] for quite a while. When the watchman went to the car, Khawar’s body was found inside with a gunshot wound.”
Police were awaiting the post-mortem report and the journalist’s call data record (CDR) as they intended to probe the death from both murder and suicide angles, according to DIG Memon.
As per a report released by the Pakistan-based media and development sector watchdog Freedom Network last year, 184 incidents of violence against journalists took place in Sindh between 2018 and 2023. These included the killings of 10 journalists in the province.
