KARACHI: While rights activists, teachers and students urged the chief justice of Pakistan to take notice of Prof Dr Hasan Zafar Arif’s murder, a daughter of the late academician on Wednesday came up with a strong reaction to “counter inaccuracies and rumours” surrounding her father’s death, saying “unless the post-mortem report says otherwise”, it should be considered a natural death.

In a statement, Shehrazade Zafar-Arif, without naming any individual or group, said that certain people were trying to exploit her father’s death for their “own political agenda”, while others were, out of a sense of love and admiration for him, trying to seek justice for what they believed to be a crime.

“My father, Dr Zafar-Arif, died on Sunday the 14th of January of what all evidence points to as being a heart attack,” she stated, adding that his death was being portrayed as a brutal murder and “some are, disgracefully, putting up photoshopped images of his body on social media with claims that he was tortured. I don’t think I need to point out how disrespectful this is towards his memory and his family”.

The mysterious death of Prof Arif — the main leader of Altaf Hussain-led Muttahida Qaumi Movement-London in Pakistan, who was found dead in the rear seat of his car in a coastal suburban village in Ibrahim Haideri on Sunday — triggered widespread speculations.

Apart from leaders of the different MQM factions which expressed their shock over his mysterious death, Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari tweeted that he was “deeply disturbed by the murder” of Prof Arif and “there needs to be a complete investigation”.

The Sindh government appointed DIG-East Sultan Ali Khowaja as an inquiry officer to conduct a probe into Prof Arif’s death. After three days of the initial probe, DIG Khowaja had said that he was waiting for the chemical examiner’s report to reach any conclusion about the mystery behind Prof Arif’s death, saying the medico-legal report suggested that it was a natural death.

But rights activists, teachers and students did not believe that Prof Arif died of natural causes. They had gathered outside the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday and staged a demonstration against his “murder”, terming it the murder of humanity.

Prof Arif’s daughter, however, tried to remove all doubts and believed that a heart attack was the reason for her father’s passing. While conceding that her father went “missing” for one night, she said that the desolate place where the body was found had been frequented by him.

“The circumstances under which he was found are not as dramatic or suspicious,” she said. “...he was missing for one night, his car was found in an area he was known to frequent, and his mobile phones were likely stolen through the rolled down windows of the car by members of the general public who were on the scene when the police arrived. The post-mortem report is not yet out, we are waiting on it, and until then, we have no real reason to believe it was anything but a heart attack.”

She criticised the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre’s staff and police for leaving the body outside in an open ambulance.

“Unless the post-mortem report says otherwise, we must believe, based on all the evidence and my own account as a first-hand witness, that it was a natural death,” she said.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2018