Saima Bhat
The moment photographs of Owais Bashir Malik’s mutilated body, an engineering student who went missing on January 12, became public, uptown’s quite Peerbagh area seethed with anger. Instantly, rumour mills started working overtime to find a suitable reason for such a brutal end to a young and promising Owais.
Many elders, including my parents, talked, rather whispered amongst themselves that Owais’ death has all the elements of boyfriend-girlfriend angle.
But even if it had any boyfriend-girlfriend angle to it, such a brutal death is unjustified. How come one can peel off skin, muscles, nails and expose internal organs like lungs and ribs for just having an affair! The way Owais’ body was mutilated beyond recognition clearly indicates that the murderer wanted to settle some scores.
But the biggest shocker was when police came with a statement saying that they have cracked the case! Police version, now public, has many loopholes in it. Like, how come only Owais got killed in the scuffle, and the other boy, who according to police posed as girl for over a year, came out unhurt! How come Owais failed to detect the gender of his killer for over a year? Is it possible? And what is the role of railway police in the entire episode? According to sources, railway policemen were not even posted on that spot where the alleged scuffle took place. I don’t doubt polices ability to crack a murder case in such a short span of time, but this time it was too quick to be true!
Given the public outcry, after police came out with its conclusion, it would be best – for police image – to reinvestigate the case taking into consideration all the angles that they might have overlooked or missed. Let the truth come out, please.
