Amir Liaquat Mystery

Was he killed for wealth, or died due to mental trauma? No answers yet

Karachi: Six months after the death of self-proclaimed religious scholar, media celebrity and lawmaker, Aamir Liaquat Hussain, controversy over the circumstances which caused his death refuses to die down.

The televangelist was found dead inside his home in Karachi’s Mehmoodabad neighbourhood on 9 June, 2022. The next day, the body was handed over to his family without an autopsy following a plea filed by his daughter, Dua Amir, and son, Ahmad Amir, at a magistrate’s court requesting that no postmortem on the body be performed.

Soon afterwards, a medico-legal certificate based on the external examination of the body – providing no opinion on the likely cause of death – was challenged by one Ahad, claiming to be a fan of Amir Liaquat. Ahad had pleaded that the body be exhumed for a post-burial autopsy.

More recently, the mother of Dania Shah, Aamir Liaquat’s third wife, has said that she will renew the plea for post-burial autopsy of the body. She expressed her intentions after her daughter, Dania Shah, was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on 16 December on a complaint filed by Aamir’s daughter, Dua Amir.

In her complaint, which was filed at FIA’s Cybercrime Reporting Centre in October, Dua alleged that her father died due to mental trauma caused by his wife Dania, who, she alleged, stealthily shot nude videos of him which she then posted on social media.

The hand-written complaint, which is seen by Bol News, says: “It is stated that my father Aamir Liaquat died on June 9 due to his third wife, namely Dania Bibi (who had filed for Khula). She made an obscene video of my father and viral(ed it) on social media which cause(d) serious stress/depression on my father, for (that) reason he died.”

Dania was arrested on 16 December from her parental house in Punjab’s city, Lodhran, and was shifted to Karachi where she filed a bail application.

During the bail application, the counsels representing the complainant (Dua Amir) and the FIA presented before the court a technical analysis report of the universal series bus (USB) which had been recovered from Dania Shah’s possession and which the videos which according to Dua Amir caused her father’s death.

They contended that the USB contained a nude video of Amir Liaquat which was recorded in his bedroom in a “sly and secretive” manner and was later shared on social media. Another video on the USB was that of an interview given by Dania Shah to a Youtuber, Yasir Shami. In the video, which was later shared on Youtube, Dania Shah could be seen admitting that she had been keeping such recordings in her possession. During the interview, she had also threatened that she was planning to harm Amir Liaquat’s reputation.

During the hearing, which was held at the court of the Judicial Magistrate Karachi East, Dania Shah pleaded that she made those videos on the request of her deceased husband. But the court was not satisfied. It rejected her bail on grounds that sharing those “sexually explicit”videos on social media, or showing them to the Youtuber who came to interview her, could not have been the intention of the deceased.

Dania Shah has now filed another bail plea at the court of a judicial magistrate. The hearing of the plea, which was fixed for 30 December, had to be postponed because of the judge’s absence from the court.

Talking to Bol News later, Dua Amir’s lawyer, Zia Ahmed Awan, said that his client has enough evidence to prove that Dania Shah was responsible for uploading the videos on social media which caused Amir Liaquat considerable mental stress.

Regarding the bid by Dania’s mother to get an autopsy done on the dead body, he said a postmortem could not establish the state of mind of the deceased in an objective manner. It can only be determined on the basis of oral evidence provided by parties to a dispute. The same goes for whether the accused person did or did not cause a death through mental torture. It will be up to the court to examine and decide, he said.

Regarding the rumours that Ámir Liaquat was “murdered” and that the motive of his murderer was access to some assets Amir Liaquat had accumulated, Zia Awan said his client has been awaiting details of such assets so that the legal heirs of the deceased could file claims to those assets.