Between 5.35 pm and 6.16 pm on the fateful December 27, doctors at Rawalpindi General Hospital (RGH) — including principal and professor of surgery, Dr Muhammad Musaddiq Khan — tried to revive Benazir Bhutto’s body, which was “pulseless”.

The 41-minute effort by the team of doctors failed to revive her and she was declared dead has been recounted in the medical report, which concludes that “open head injury with depressed skull structure, led to cardiopulmonary arrest, as the “cause of death”. Conforming to the Pakistan Government’s claim that she didn’t die of any bullet injuries, the report says about the wound in right “temporoparietal region” and its shape was “irregularly oval” and “edges were irregular”.

Though the medical report has been rubbished by Benazir’s PPP and its veracity been doubted by many in Pakistan, it gives a very racy account of those minutes, as it starts by saying that, “on December 27, at approximately 5.35 pm, a female patient was brought in Accident and Emergency department of Rawalpindi General Hospital, Rawalpindi. She was brought to the Resusucitation Room and was received by Dr Aurangzeb Khan and Dr Saeeda Yasmin of Surgical Unit-II. The patient was identified as Mohatarma Benazir Bhutto.”

Dr Habib Ahmad Khan, medical superintendent of RGH, also arrived immediately. According to the report, “The patient was pulseless and was not breathing. She was markedly pale. Her pupils were fixed, dilated and non reacting to light. A wound was present on the right temporoparietal region through which blood was trickling down and whitish material which looked like brain matter was visible in the wound. Her clothes were soaked with blood.”

... contd.