KARACHI – The citizens have raised concerns over incidents involving the alleged short-term kidnapping of people engaged in cryptocurrency trading and asked the judicial commission to investigate whether crypto trading could be linked to the circumstances surrounding Mir Raza’s killing in Karachi.
The sources close to the commission said that 10 citizens have so far directly contacted the commission regarding the case.
The submissions come as the commission continues to gather questions, complaints and information from the victim’s family and members of the public as part of its inquiry.
More questions have been submitted to the judicial commission investigating the killing of Mir Raza, with his family’s lawyer, Jibran Nasir, seeking responses from senior police officials and the investigation team.
Jibran Nasir submitted questionnaires to the commission addressed to Additional Inspector General Azad Khan, Deputy Inspector General Farukh Lanjhar and DIG Amir Farooqi, who heads the investigation team.
The citizens questioned whether the killing may have been connected to cryptocurrency trading and urged the commission to examine the possibility as part of its investigation.
Earlier the reports emerged that a new digital trail surfaced in Mir Raza murder investigation as investigators are now digging through six months of Binance cryptocurrency transactions, hoping the data can reveal financial clues and shed light on what happened before the young entrepreneur’s killing.
Police sources said the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) got six months of Binance-related data connected to the case. The records have been shared with the investigation committee and judicial commission in a format resembling conventional Call Detail Records.
But the raw data is not yet easy for investigators to interpret. Police therefore asked technical team to decode and reorganise the cryptocurrency information into a simpler format. Investigators want a day-by-day breakdown showing how many transactions took place during the six-month period.
The data was obtained from abroad and is now being examined by NCCIA specialists, including coding experts who can analyse complex cryptocurrency transaction records. Police officials expect the agency’s analytical report within the next two days.
Raza’s case remained shrouded in controversy since his disappearance in Karachi. The young entrepreneur was reported missing on July 28. His body was discovered the following day in bushes near a wedding hall in Gulistan-e-Jauhar. What initially added to the confusion was uncertainty over the cause of death. Questions were raised about whether Raza had been murdered or had taken his own life.
A second autopsy eventually changed the direction of the case, confirming that Raza had been tortured before being killed. That finding intensified criticism of the original investigation and prompted his family to demand a Joint Investigation Team, or JIT.
Sindh High Court rejected family’s request, while a judicial commission was subsequently established to assess how the case had been handled and whether the investigation had been properly conducted.
The commission itself has now uncovered another troubling aspect of the case — inconsistencies in the original post-mortem report. During Tuesday’s proceedings, Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed told the commission that several important details had been left out of the initial report.
She also pointed to a mismatch between the documented entry and exit wounds of the bullet. The proceedings then took an unexpected turn when Sindh Advocate General Javed Dero intervened while Raza family’s lawyer Jibran Nasir was questioning the police surgeon.
Justice Umar Sial, who heads the commission, expressed strong displeasure over the intervention and ordered Sindh Home Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar to appear before the panel at 9am on Thursday.
The earlier investigation had itself come under intense scrutiny. During proceedings concerning the family’s JIT petition, DSP Siraj Lashari told the Sindh High Court that police were treating the incident as a murder and had ruled out suicide following the post-mortem findings.
He said the investigation was effectively restarted from scratch on August 13. Investigators were also building their case around digital evidence, particularly CCTV footage.
As the hearings progressed, attention shifted beyond the crime scene to people who had been close to Raza. During the commission’s second hearing on September 1, Medico-Legal Officer Dr Usama Sheikh faced questions over the shortcomings in the first autopsy report.
The panel also heard from members of Raza’s family and Edhi volunteers who had moved his body.
Raza’s business partner Ahmed Bhurdey also came under scrutiny. The commission observed that some of the details provided by Bhurdey appeared unnecessary and, instead of removing suspicion, seemed to raise additional questions about his possible involvement. The panel also questioned whether Bhurdey’s focus on Raza’s financial obligations suggested greater concern about business matters than about the fate of his childhood friend.
