Murtaza Bhutto

MIR MAY HAVE SURVIVED
KARACHI, Dec. 18, 1996: The tribunal of inquiry, which is investigating the
Sept 20 incident of Clifton in which Mir Murtaza Bhutto and seven others
were killed, has held the view that the post-mortem conducted on the body of
the PPP(SB) leader was defective and was handled in a routine manner
without going into the details as prescribed by the law. A medico-legal officer
of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Dr Ayaz Ali Memon, who was giving
his testimony about the post- mortem conducted on the body of Mir Murtaza
at Mideast Medical Centre (MMC), was told that the medical officers merely
did a "Kam chalao kam (did their job perfunctorily)," according to Justice
Nasir Aslam Zahid.
The MLO was shown a book with colour photographs as to how the face of a
dead man was incised and came to the conclusion about the damage done to
the nerves and blood arteries, and the medical officer was told that in a
similar case, Mir Murtaza had also received a gunshot which hit above the
right cheek and it routed through and exited from the left side of the neck,
thus damaging the tongue, jaws and arteries.
In the post-mortem, no incisions were carried out by medico- legal officers Dr
Ayaz Ali Memon and Dr M. Ismail Rajpar, under the supervision of Dr Irfan
Qureshi, additional police surgeon, JPMC, Karachi, and in the presence of Dr
Nizam Memon, police surgeon, Karachi, and their finding was that the man
died because of that gunshot after excessive loss of blood. Justice (Dr) Ghous
Mohammad produced medical books to show how post-mortems are
conducted and reports prepared. Justice (Dr) Ghous also pointed out that the
document prepared was also defective because in the general particulars it
has been stated that the corpse was sent by the SHO Clifton PS and it was
brought by ASI M. Rasib, and both these inquiries were wrong, as the corpse
was neither brought by anyone to the hospital nor it was sent by any
individual police officer.
The witness, who had prepared the document, was told that the corpse was
there at MMC, before the MLOs arrived there from JPMC to conduct the postmortem
examination. Mir Murtaza was brought alive at the hospital and he
died there at 11:55 pm and his post- mortem was conducted at 6:15, after the
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