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.

The new video, which came a day after photos emerged of an armed youth shooting Bhutto, will strengthen suspicion that the Government was trying to cover up the extent of the lapses in Bhutto’s security.

Minallah said doctors, who treated Bhutto, had told him that they wanted to conduct the autopsy but the Rawalpindi Police chief had not agreed to this. Minallah’s statement runs contrary to the contention of Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema, who had said on Friday that the autopsy was not done at the request of Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari.

Cheema said the doctors had performed only an “external post-mortem” using X-rays while Minallah argued that avoiding the mandatory autopsy on the body of Bhutto “was a violation of the Criminal Procedure Code.” Bhutto’s close aide Sherry Rehman and other PPP workers too dismissed the Government’s stand, saying their leader had died after being shot in the head. As the gunman — a clean-shaven youth wearing a white shirt, dark waistcoat and dark glasses — opened fire, Bhutto’s hair and scarf appeared to rise before she fell into the car. The shooter was a few metres from Bhutto when he opened fire from the left side of her vehicle. This was followed by the blast.

Some people are even comparing the footage to the famed Zapruder film, which captured the last moments before the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963 and sparked numerous conspiracy theories.