A new footage of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and an inconclusive medical report on the cause of her death have contradicted Pakistan Government’s version of former Premier’s death and lent credence to her party’s claim that she was shot dead.

The footage aired on Monday by Britain’s Channel 4 and subsequently beamed by Pakistani channels showed that Bhutto, who stood at the sun-roof of her bulletproof vehicle, had fallen into the car after shots were fired and before a suicide bomber detonated his explosives after the Rawalpindi rally on December 27. This was contrary to the Government’s account — based on a medical report prepared by doctors at the hospital where Bhutto died — that the force of the blast had thrown Bhutto against a metal lever on the car’s sun-roof, causing a fatal skull fracture.

However, Athar Minallah, a top lawyer and a member of the board of management of Rawalpindi General Hospital where Bhutto was taken after the attack, said the doctors had a one-line finding on the cause of death — “Open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest.” Minallah said that the initial report does not say what caused her death, but said the “open head injury” and it could have been caused by “a bullet, shrapnel or a lever of the car”.The new revelations are likely to intensify calls and strengthen her Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) demand for an international UN probe similar to the one investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri.

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