ISLAMABAD, April 9: A Supreme Court bench on Monday granted four more weeks to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to solve the murder of a Bahria Town security guard in 2008, which the FIA claimed police had complicated.

`We know many suspects were acquitted while Shimroza, wife of the deceased, took Rs20 million (to keep quiet),` said Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, when FIA` legal director, Mohammad Azam, alleged that police inefficiency had destroyed the case at the very beginning.

It was very difficult to reach a firm conclusion when witnesses were not forthcoming to recognise the suspects and divergent opinions were expressed in the report of the medico-legal officer and the doctor who conducted the postmortem on the body of guard Mohammad Fayyaz, he argued.

At this, the chief justice inquired why could not the inquiry be conducted on circumstantial evidence.

`Why should not the doctor and the magistrates be dealt with in accordancewith the law if both were involved,` he asked.

`We even know where the (hush) money came from,` Justice Tariq Pervez of the bench told the FIA, which was given the task last month to solve the murder case within three weeks.

In the end the bench gave it new date of May 7 to do that.

FIA Director-General Javed Iqbal put the entire blame for the mess on the police. He dismissed the actions taken by the Inspector General Police Islamabad in the case as `insufficient`, and said the city police exhibited total ineptness.

`It is a typical and classic example of police highhandedness, lethargy and criminal negligence,` the FIA chief told the three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Tariq Parvez.

The bench was hearing a review petition of Raja Muhammad Riasat, father of murdered Muhammad Fayyaz.

The case began on August 14, 2008, when Shaukat Ali, security supervisor in the Defence Housing Authority (DHA)reported to the Sihala police that Raja Arshad Mehmood, with security guards Zulkarnain and Zakaullah of Eden Garden and more than 70 other persons, majority of them residents of Dhoke Darzian, had attacked to occupy DHA land. While retreating, the attackers took away with them DHA guard Raja Mohammad Fayyaz.

Fayyaz was found lying dead near the graveyard of village Dhoke Darzian the next day.

Disappointed with the police investigation, the Supreme Court, in early March 2012, handed the task to the FIA to finish within three weeks.

On February 1, the Islamabad police had conceded before the apex court that no progress had been made in the matter after October 10, 2010.

On Monday, the DG FIA submitted to the court that `if we go by the original medico-legal certificate, whatever the police said in their subsequent reports was total concoction`. He requested the court to grant more time so that he could `fix criminal liability on those responsible for the mess up`.