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Maham Amjad was just 15 when her father was gunned down by a colleague in Pakistan. As the case went cold, she launched her own investigation and finally traced the murderer to Dubai.
\nOn the afternoon of August 26, 2008, Maham Amjad, then 15, was still in bed, nursing her fractured right thumb \u2013 a basketball injury at school.<\/p>\n
She still remembers the day vividly. The landline phone rang, and Maham \u2013 the youngest among three siblings \u2013 rushed to receive it before anyone else.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmjad sahab has been shot,\u201d someone said from the other end, referring to her father Muhammad Ahmed Amjad, 43, a senior official at the State Life Insurance Corporation, the largest insurer in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember much of what happened afterwards. My father\u2019s colleagues and family friends started to show up at our home,\u201d Maham tells TRT World over the phone, recalling the chain of events that would change her life. \u201cOur whole world revolved around dad. My mother and elder sister rushed to the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she was finally taken to the hospital – after a lot of tears and pleas – she refused to believe that the man lying on the hospital bed was her father, who was shot ten times and was in a coma.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of his eyes was blue and purple. His body had bloated. I screamed this cannot be my daddy. I prayed for my dad, who had gone to the office in the morning to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amjad died four days later.<\/p>\n
The suspected assailant, Muhammad Taqi Shah, was said to be a disgruntled employee in the same company, an insurance salesman. He allegedly walked out of the building with the murder weapon in hand without anyone having confronted him, though hundreds of people are present in State Life\u2019s office on any given day.<\/p>\n
Police filed a murder case against Shah, who had gone into hiding. A year later, a court declared him an absconder. But Shah vanished, leaving behind no trail – or so he thought.<\/p>\n
Overcoming fear<\/p>\n
Killing a regional director of a multi-billion dollar insurance behemoth was no small matter. Yet, Maham recalls, everyone around her father seemed to be rushing to bury him and move on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen my father was alive, we didn\u2019t face any financial difficulty. He was the one who did grocery shopping, paid for it and took care of all our needs. But after him, it was like everything spun out of control,\u201d says Maham, now a 28-year-old marketing consultant with a penchant for the arts.<\/p>\n
Within a few years, the company-provided home and car were gone. Maham\u2019s elder brother was studying in London. Their mother, a homemaker, was scared for his life and forced him to fly out soon after the funeral.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have any uncles. My brother was the only man left in our family. We couldn\u2019t afford to lose him,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Education, status and social circle didn\u2019t matter as Maham, her mother, and sister endured intimidation, threats, sneers and unwanted approaches over the years.<\/p>\n
A few months after Amjad\u2019s murder, someone sent Maham an email with attached pictures of his father\u2019s bloodied body.<\/p>\n
Police registered a case against the accused, but that was about it.<\/p>\n
Maham\u2019s family moved 1,200 kilometres to another city, Lahore. \u201cIt was a complete cultural shock. I never really fit in. All my friends were in Karachi. It was a miserable life.\u201d<\/p>\n
But life did go on and she managed to deal with her situation along with a longing for her father and a desire to see his murderer brought to justice – something that grew with each passing day.<\/p>\n
The search<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a famous TV jingle that any Pakistani of a certain age can easily relate to. \u201cAye Khuda, meray abbu salamat rahein\u2026 (Oh God, keep my father under your protection),\u201d it goes. The punchline comes then, \u201cHe has bought life insurance so we can live with peace and prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Launched over 50 years ago, it is one of the longest-running ad campaigns that has helped State Life become a household name and mobilise hundreds of billions of rupees in insurance premia.<\/p>\n
But the ad became a nightmare for Maham. \u201cI cried watching it. It tormented me. I used to sing that to my father. I can\u2019t believe how a company which promises such protection would not do anything for the family of its own murdered employee.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Maham grew older, the questions that had lingered at the back of her mind became a driving force to find out what had actually happened and seek justice. She also spent hours on the internet, Googling in search of Shah, the accused in her father’s murder.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if I did find him on some website, I didn\u2019t know how to link him to my father and the crime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five years ago, she moved to Dubai to focus on her marketing career and also ventured into a real estate business. \u201cI never gave up searching for him, though.\u201d<\/p>\n
To cope with her loss and overcome childhood trauma, Maham had a picture painted of herself alongside her father \u2013 dressed as a bride being hugged by her father, as the family patriarch does before walking the daughter down the aisle.<\/p>\n
Then one day in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, while doing one of her routine internet searches, Maham came across a LinkedIn profile of a man named Taqi Shah. Of all the places in the world, he was living in Dubai.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you need a job, you make a LinkedIn profile. What got my attention was that he had mentioned State Life in his work experience, and the years he worked there matched the events related to my father.\u201d<\/p>\n
She took a screenshot and shared the picture with one of her father\u2019s old colleagues. Yes, it was him, he told her.<\/p>\n
Maham wasn\u2019t excited or super relieved. \u201cI had mixed feelings. I knew the system and knew I had to be patient. It was a cold case from 14 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the next few months, she went about systematically gathering evidence, reaching out to former employees who knew her father and collecting documents her family had never seen before. She hired a lawyer in Pakistan and got hold of the police report as she built her case.<\/p>\n
She knew UAE authorities wouldn\u2019t arrest someone for a crime committed in another country so long ago.<\/p>\n
For two years, Maham tracked Shah\u2019s online activity. She discovered that many of her father\u2019s former colleagues – some who had even attended his funeral – were friends with Shah on his Facebook account.<\/p>\n
Slowly, Maham uncovered evidence that led her to believe that State Life deliberately tried to undermine the murder investigation.<\/p>\n
For instance, Amjad\u2019s family was told that the company was overseeing criminal proceedings against Shah, even ensuring that his name was on no-fly list. That never happened.<\/p>\n
A month before he was murdered, Amjad had filed an official complaint to the senior management about how on one occasion Shah had tried to ram his car into Amjad’s vehicle. Maham is pressing State Life to divulge if any internal investigation on Shah\u2019s conduct took place.<\/p>\n
She also found that Shah\u2019s wife and son were hired by State Life even when he was on the run.<\/p>\n
In a response to questions from TRT World, a State Life spokesperson confirmed that Shah\u2019s wife and son had worked for the company as \u201ccommissioned based agents\u201d since 2004 and \u201csubsequently their contract stands terminated.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said that the then-management knew about the Shah\u2019s threats and the car-ramming incident. An inquiry was still ongoing when Amjad was shot dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cState Life is fully supportive and continues to cooperate with concerned authorities to ensure the accused is brought to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maham had come to the conclusion that Amjad was cracking down on corruption within the state-run company and, in the process, had annoyed a few people who benefited from kickbacks and illegal commissions.<\/p>\n
In October 2022, she began sharing her story via Twitter. She went after everyone she believed was complicit in the murder and the cover-up – Shah, his former boss, State Life and its board members. Her lawyers approached the court with evidence about his whereabouts and succeeded in getting an order for his arrest.<\/p>\n
But Shah was still living in Dubai as a free man. Chances were high that he would try and flee once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took a very calculated step and let him think I am just a weak girl who can\u2019t do anything.\u201d Maham began sharing Shah\u2019s picture under a \u2018wanted\u2019 title.<\/p>\n
Instead of defending himself with an alibi or any evidence, Shah resorted to character assassination, accusing Maham of being a \u201cbad woman\u201d out to tarnish his reputation.<\/p>\n
In a video ostensibly filmed inside a mosque, making sure to show the background, he accused Amjad of being a \u201ctyrant\u201d. And then he threatened to kill her in another video. The threat finally gave Maham a reason to approach Dubai police.<\/p>\n
She filed a criminal report against Shah, who was arrested by Dubai police in February and remains in custody. \u201cThey asked me to come in for identification but I didn\u2019t want to see his face.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, with pressure piling on officials \u2013 Maham\u2019s video about her ordeal has been retweeted more than 5,000 times and counting \u2013 authorities in Pakistan approached Interpol to issue a red corner notice \u2013 sort of an international arrest warrant \u2013 now that Shah\u2019s location was known.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter my father\u2019s death, my mother went into depression and never came out of it. She remained a widower, and her kids had to take care of her like she was our child. None of it was easy. Now I want Shah to be brought back and I want justice,\u201d says Maham.<\/p>\n
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