Scotland Yard looking for Benazir's headscarf

Islamabad, Jan 7: Scotland Yard investigators are looking for the headscarf slain former premier Benazir Bhutto was wearing at the time of being shot outside Rawalpindi"s Liaqat Bagh area on December 27.

Sources said that a five-member team of British investigators led by David Keith has expressed desire to examine all the circumstantial evidence available with local authorities in this high profile case, including her last worn headscarf. Benazir was wearing a white headscarf when targeted in a gun and bomb attack as she was leaving Liaqat Bagh after addressing a public rally. "The headscarf of Benazir Bhutto is likely to resolve the mystery which swirls around the fact that whether she was shot in the head from right or left", police sources said.

"The scarf would carry the corresponding cut/cuts on it which may help the investigators in ascertaining bullet direction and size", they added. according to the eye-witnesses, a shooter as well as a suicide bomber attacked the Benazir Bhutto from her left, but the medical evidence suggested an open wound on her right temporal region.

The contradiction leads to doubts that assassinated former premier was targeted by more than one marksman from separate directions.

In addition to the headscarf, the British investigators are also intending to separately interview some of the local police officials including Senior Superintendent of Police (Operations) to verify the notes collected during the first two days of their the investigations.

The foreign investigators are also scheduled to interview a board of doctors on Tuesday that treated Benazir at Rawalpindi General Hospital (RGH) before she was pronounced dead shortly after being attacked. Though the Scotland Yard investigators have met some of the doctors and seen the medical ward where Benazir was being treated in hospital, they are yet to meet all the members of the Board.

Officials of Rawalpindi police, who are accused of wiping down the crime scene within hours of the gory assassination, have already shared version of the event with Scotland Yard counter-terrorism and forensic experts, The Nation reported.

After receiving detailed briefings from local police and examining the chart of its reported deployment around the targeted motorcade, the visiting investigators are now wondering why only one policeman was killed and only few sustained injuries when over twenty PPP activists fell prey to the brutal plot bedsides Benazir Bhutto.

ANI