KARACHI: The sample analysis report of the deceased 25-year-old Mir Raza Ali found gunshot residue (GSR) on his chest and back wounds, as well as the skin of his right and left hands, it emerged on Monday.
Raza, a young entrepreneur and owner of eatery Wafflix, had gone missing on July 28, and his bullet-riddled body was found a day later in bushes in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. A murder charge was added to the case that was registered after he had gone missing following a controversy over his initial autopsy, exhumation and a second postmortem.
The second post-mortem examination had revealed multiple injuries and a congealed black substance in his mouth and throat.
Meanwhile, samples collected during the exhumation were sent for forensic analysis. The samples were tested at Karachi University’s International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), following which two reports were released.
One of the reports, dated August 17 and seen by Dawn, said that GSR was found on swabs from Raza’s chest and back wounds, the skin of his hands and the swabs from the hands.
Moreover, no “sedative, psychotropic, narcotic, or poisonous” substance was found on his forehead’s skin, the cotton covering his face, right foot’s skin, soil above his grave, soil underneath the corpse, the swab from his nasopharynx, the swab from his mouth and his right hand’s skin, the report said.
It further said that no foreign compounds were found on the collected articles.
The second sample analysis report, dated Aug 11 and seen by Dawn, said that following an examination of Raza’s shirt, a perforation on the posterior (back) portion, with a corresponding larger defect on the anterior (front) portion had been found.
According to the report, the posterior defect was approximately 6.99 millimetres in diameter while the anterior defect was approximately 35.37mm in diameter.
As per the reports, the examination of material collected from the areas surrounding the defects detected Lead (Pb) and Barium (Ba) on front and back of the shirt.
“These elements are commonly associated with conventional firearm discharge residues,” it said.
It stated that the the posterior defect exhibited a “greater abundance/higher” relative concentration of the detected Pb and Ba signals compared with the anterior defect.
“The SEM-EDS findings demonstrate the presence of Pb- and Ba-containing particulate/material associated with the examined defects,” the report added.
The report said traces of bupivacaine, an amide-type local anaesthetic, were found in Raza’s blood and traces of acid on his shirt.
No detectable traces of “sedative, psychotropic, narcotic or poisonous” substance were identified in the contents of his stomach, pieces of lungs, liver, kidney and spleen.
