POMONA, Calif. -- A doctor was acquitted Wednesday of strangling his 11-year-old son and dismembering his body in a bitter custody dispute.
Dr. Khalid Parwez, 40, a native of Pakistan who resided in Hacienda Heights, was found innocent by a Superior Court jury of one count of first-degree murder. Jurors reached a verdict on their second day of deliberations.
Parwez, a former obstetrician and gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in West Los Angeles who has been in custody since the November 1987 slaying, was expected to be released later Wednesday.
'The jury listened to the evidence and rendered its verdict,' said Deputy District Attorney Richard Burns, who prosecuted the case.
Defense attorney Leslie Abramson was not immediately available for comment.
Parwez was accused of strangling his son, Raheel Parwez, and dismembering his body with a saw and an ax, then removing the flesh from the bones and dissecting the torso.
The body of the seventh-grade student was found stuffed in several plastic bags in a Hacienda Heights garbage dumpster Nov. 17, 1987.
Burns said the child's major joints were severed, the skull was severed from the body, all the skin stripped from the skull and all the organs removed.
He said the body parts then were cut into 'considerably more' than 200 pieces.
The prosecutor charged that the slaying stemmed from a bitter dispute between Parwez and his former wife over custody of the boy and his younger brother. A judge had granted custody of both boys to the father, but Raheel wanted to live with his mother, Burns said.
Burns accused Parwez of killing the boy in retaliation against his ex-wife and also because he felt the child had turned against him.
Abramson said much of the prosecution's evidence was purely circumstantial.She said there was no motive for Parwez to kill his son and argued that her client was in no danger of losing custody of his sons.
Dr. Parwez's brother, Satter Ahmed, 27, was also charged with the boy's murder, but fled before he could be arrested. Prosecutors believe he returned to Pakistan.
Parwez could have been sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison if he been convicted.
Before reaching their verdict, jurors were twice ordered by the judge to renew their deliberations. On the first occasion Jan. 4, a juror was removed and replaced with an alternate because she had to tend to her husband, who was in poor health.
On Jan. 17, another juror was replaced by an alternate for undisclosed reasons. The jury resumed its deliberations Tuesday.
