By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : As the war of words over what actually caused Benazir’s Bhutto’s death gets bitter, the Pakistan government Saturday said it was ready to exhume the slain former prime minister’s body and conduct a post mortem examination to clear doubts over whether she had bullet or shrapnel injuries.
The announcement came hours after Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leaders refuted government claims that she died after her head hit a sunroof lever of her vehicle and not of bullet or blast injuries following an attack at her election rally in Rawalpindi Thursday.
“If Pakistan Peoples Party agrees we are ready to exhume the body and conduct an autopsy,” Javed Iqbal Cheema, spokesperson of interior ministry, told reporters here.
Cheema said: “Facts are facts, yesterday (Friday) I gave you facts about the incident; bullets were fired, there was a blast but she did not die of any of these two causes,” he said referring to his press briefing Friday.
“If the family members and PPP leaders agree, we would be ready to conduct the autopsy by national or international doctors,” he said.
Accusing the government of mounting a massive cover up operation over Bhutto’s assassination, a close aide of the slain leader stoutly maintained that she died of gunshots.
“I saw the bullet wounds, it went through her head and she lost a lot of blood,” said Sherry Rehman, Bhutto’s spokesperson.
Rehman, who said she was in the former prime minister’s motorcade at the time of the gun and suicide attack, rejected outright government claims that the death was caused when Bhutto’s head hit the sunroof of her Toyota Land Cruiser.
“I was actually part of the party which bathed her body before the funeral,” said Rehman, who added that her car was used to transport Bhutto to hospital.
“There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side.
“We could not even wash her properly because the wound was still seeping. She lost a huge amount of blood,” she said.
“What the interior ministry is saying is ridiculous and dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened.”
Bhutto’s lawyer Farooq Naik told IANS Saturday, a day after Bhutto was buried at her ancestral graveyard in Garhi Khuda Bux, that the government was pushing the country towards civil war by putting out false stories.
“This is a pack of lies. Are the makers of such a costly vehicle fools that the sunroof of the vehicle could fatally injure her?” asked Naik. He warned that such foolish statements by the government would turn the violence into a civil war.
“We are requesting our people to remain peaceful, but we won’t be able to do so if the government continues giving such statements,” he said.
Bhutto, chief of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), died Thursday minutes after addressing a public rally at Liaqat Bagh in nearby Rawalpindi while she was being driven away with her two close associates.
Another PPP leader Farhatullah Babar said the government was doing all this to divert international and national attention from the real issues.
Meanwhile, Cheema said that a team of Pakistani investigators have started probing the murder and would finalise their report “soon”. But he didn’t give any deadline.
“We will be able to give you the details about the investigations once they complete it,” he said.
Asked why the government was not allowing international investigators to probe the murder, Cheema said: “This is an act of terrorism and it goes a long way back… We understand our dynamics. Scotland Yard cannot conduct such an inquiry, they cannot go into tribal areas, trust our own intelligence sources.”