New Delhi: In a heart-wrenching revelation that peels back layers of private torment behind a public facade, former Punjab Director General of Police Mohammad Mustafa has broken his long silence over the mysterious death of his 35-year-old son, Aquil Akhtar, on October 16.
Found unconscious at the family’s residence in Sector 4, MDC, Panchkula, Aquil— a practising lawyer at the Punjab and Haryana High Court — succumbed amid suspicions of a drug overdose, sparking a high-stakes probe that has ensnared his parents in murder and conspiracy charges.
Mustafa, a 1985-batch IPS officer and prominent Congress figure, detailed in an emotional outpouring how Aquil’s 18-year battle with drug addiction and severe schizophrenia shattered their family’s equilibrium. “He was completely psychotic by 2024, unable to discern reality from delusion,” Mustafa recounted, his voice heavy with years of concealed agony. Aquil’s erratic behaviour peaked in viral videos: one from August 27 accusing family women — wife, mother Razia Sultana (a former Punjab minister), and sister — of running a brothel and offering them to politicians; another on October 8, retracting it all as hallucinatory fabrications, mistakenly claiming it was a year old when it was mere weeks.
The ex-DGP painted vivid strokes of domestic chaos: Aquil fractured his mother’s hip in a 2008 rage, dismissed publicly as a fall; attempted to strangle his wife, leading to a brief police custody before familial pleas brought him home; and even set fire to their bedroom.
As DGP, Mustafa intervened personally, apologising to the constables Aquil assaulted to hush scandals and shield the family’s honour. “We switched schools and universities repeatedly and locked him in rooms for days during binges, all to preserve dignity in public life,” he confessed, alleging political rivals now twist the tragedy for smears.
With an FIR lodged on Monday (October 20) by neighbour Shamshuddin— alleging illicit affairs and foul play — and a Special Investigation Team probing viscera reports (due in months), Mustafa vows transparency. “We conducted the post-mortem ourselves for truth’s sake. Let the SIT unravel it; we stand accused but unbowed.”
As condolences from Punjab Congress leaders like Amarinder Singh Raja Warring echo, this saga underscores the unseen scars of power, addiction, and mental fragility in India’s corridors of influence.