A judicial magistrate in Karachi on Monday granted post-arrest bail to Armaghan Qureshi, the prime suspect in the Mustafa Amir murder case, in a matter linked to an illegal call centre and credit card data theft.
On January 6, 2025, Mustafa Amir, 23, was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA), allegedly by his friends Armaghan and Sheraz.
According to the police, the victim’s body was thereafter put in his car’s trunk and set on fire in the Hub area of Balochistan.
A final challan in the murder case was submitted against Armaghan in August 2025. In addition to several other cases, he was also named in a data theft case registered by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on April 16, 2025.
On Monday, Armaghan’s bail application was heard by Judicial Magistrate (South). Advocate Khurram Abbas, where his counsel said that the prosecution had not shown any incriminating evidence and that the investigation had already been completed last year.
The defence maintained that there was no complainant or private witness against the suspect and no evidence linking him to the offence.
After hearing arguments, the magistrate approved Armaghan’s bail plea against surety bonds of Rs100,000.
Despite the relief, Armaghan will remain behind bars as he is still facing multiple other cases.
Apart from the murder charge, FIRs have also been registered against him over injuring police officials during a February shoot-out that led to his arrest, as well as cases related to the recovery of illegal imported weapons and money laundering.
According to the FIA’s FIR, Armaghan was allegedly running an illegal call centre in DHA. The agency claimed the operation was involved in harassment, fraud, identity impersonation, cheating, spoofing, phishing and extortion.
Reports quoted sources as saying that employees at the call centre were trained to pose as officials from international organisations to obtain sensitive information, including names, debit and credit card details and social security numbers.
The FIA further alleged that illegal financial transactions were carried out on the instructions of Armaghan, who allegedly operated under the alias “Alex Boss”.
Separately, in July 2025, the investigating officer of the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) informed a judicial magistrate that Armaghan had rented two properties to establish call centres in Lahore and Islamabad following Amir’s murder.