A former Pakistan police officer has claimed in an interview with Geo News that he was forced by the then interior minister Rehman Malik to implicate former President Pervez Musharraf in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case. Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan’s first woman prime minister.
When asked why he did not sign the report of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) formed to probe the Bhutto assassination case, former police officer Rao Anwar told Geo News that Malik wanted Musharraf named as an accused in the case without recording the former president’s statement or interrogating him.
Anwar said he asked Rehman Malik for evidence, but the former minister did not have any. “I did not sign (the JIT report) as Malik pressured me to accuse Musharraf,” Anwar said.
Anwar, who is accused of being involved in about 400 fake encounter cases and is presently out on bail, also said that he was ready to give the statement under oath.
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Bhutto was murdered on December 27, 2007 in a suicide bombing carried out by the Pakistani Taliban in Rawalpindi during an election rally.
Raising doubts about Malik’s role in the case, the former police officer said the ex-interior minister should have been probed as the head of Benazir Bhutto’s security, but was never interrogated. Malik recently died of Covid-19 complications.
Ikram Mehsud had been named as the main suspect in the Bhutto assassination case. Baitullah Mehsud was named as the mastermind of the attack. Anwar said that another terrorist group led by Tayyub Mehsud was involved in the October 18, 2007, attack on Bhutto’s motorcade in Karachi that left 180 people dead.
“They (Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party) could have arrested both Ikram and Tayyub and solved both cases,” Anwar told Geo News. However, the Pakistan Peoples Party government in 2008 did not show seriousness in the cases, he further said.
Anwar said he was making the revelations now as he wanted to bring some “facts on record” after hearing about the deteriorating health of Musharraf.
Musharraf is admitted to a hospital in the UAE and is in a critical condition with no possibility of recovery. Last week, Musharaf’s family refuted reports that he was on ventilator support and said he was going through a difficult stage of recovery as his organs were malfunctioning.
“He is not on the ventilator. Has been hospitalized for the last 3 weeks due to a complication of his ailment (Amyloidosis). Going through a difficult stage where recovery is not possible and organs are malfunctioning. Pray for ease in his daily living,” his family said in a Twitter post.
(With inputs from IANS)