Hayat Khan Sherpao: The Murder
17 March 2008
By NB
I‘ve been staring at the Peshawar High Court’s judgment in Asfandyar Wali v the State for about 8 months. This case, like several in Pakistan’s history, is deeply intertwined with both national and international politics. As part of the backdrop to Bhutto’s dismissal and ultimately his execution, I would assume that it has been addressed at some length in print literature. However, having looked a fair bit, I’ve yet to find anything and there is certainly nothing on the Internet about the case.
I will therefore, attempt to ‘blog’ the entire case as I read it. I am however mindful that the post is likely to be quite long, and so to ensure that it doesn’t go completely unread by all of Five Rupees’ ADD suffering readership, I will break up the post into several segments and post on consecutive days.
Note: This is therefore the first of a four part series of posts about the murder of Hayat Khan Sherpao.
Click here for the 2nd part.
Click here for the 3rd part.
Click here for the 4th part.
Preface
This case is about a political assassination committed in 1975. The links to the circumstances surrounding Benazir’s assassination and Pakistan’s current situation are numerous, and I shall do my best to identify them as I blog the case. But I will say at the outset that it is remarkable to see just how much of Pakistan’s politics ‘runs in the families’, and how structural and geopolitical issues play out on such personal levels within those families.
Succession and Autonomy
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto dismissed the NAP - JUI coalition government in Baluchistan in February of 1973. A declassified intelligence dispatch from the American Embassy in Islamabad explained that particular incident in the ‘great game’ and described how Iraq was involved.The NAP was obviously less than pleased and resigned its N.W.F.P ministry in protest.
By July of 1973 Wali Khan was becoming increasingly vitriolic. Regarding Bhutto’s sacking of the NAP-JUI government in Baluchistan, he announced publicly that the time for appeals had passed and his followers would now meet force with force.
How things have(nt) changed. To state the obvious, even if the current problems in N.W.F.P and Baluchistan are not simply continuations of the previous conflicts, they do follow a pattern wherein:
a) An ethnic or sub-ethnic group angrily aires a legitimate grievance,
b) which is unsatisfactorily addressed by the Federal Government,
c) and which is then expressed again but this time with violence and force,
d) and that violence is met with more force from the Government,
e) and the issue morphs into a debate about the use of force against the state’s own citizens and vice-versa,
f) and what began as a grievance evolves into a situation somewhere between outright succession and militant ethno- nationalism.
I digress. By 1974, the Baluchi insurgency was well and truly underway with an estimated 135’000 soldiers and militants thrashing it out in the province. The pro-Soviet Sardar Daoud regime in Kabul was backing the insurgents. The Shah of Iran, who also had his own ethnic Baluch to deal with, was equally wary of Kabul, and was backing Bhutto. Which brings us nicely to the date in question; the 8th of February 1975.
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The Murder
It’s a Saturday, and the Assembly Hall at Peshawar University is crowded with students and professors. The office bearers of the History Department are due to take oath in the afternoon. The Chief Guest is to administer the oaths, and he’s running late. He eventually arrives and is received warmly by the President and Secretary of the History Society.
The Holy Quran is read aloud at 4:00 pm, and the assembly hall sits quietly.
One by one, the Chief Guest administers the oaths. The series of handshakes are punctuated by camera flashes from an attending photographer. During the oath taking, an employee of Radio Pakistan gets up and places a tape recorder on a table near the entrance to the hall. The Chief Guest finishes administering the oaths, and there are smiles and a few speeches, including one from the Chief Guest himself. The Chairman of the History Society then calls the Chief Guest away from the rostrum, to have some tea on the verandah.
The Chief Guest walks towards that direction, but is called back when Sardar Muhammad Khan, Joint Secretary of the society, demands a donation from the Chief Guest and starts asking why it wasn’t announced during his earlier speech.
Hayat Khan Sherpao is the Chief Guest. He returns to the rostrum to explain why the donation had not been announced. He speaks a few words, but his speech is ended by the force of the blast. From under his feet, a huge explosion tears through his legs, breaks his jaws and rips through his skull, causing his brain to protrude.
Hayat Khan Sherpao was a founding member of the PPP and one of Bhutto’s closest lieutenants. He was said to have been an orator on par with Bhutto himself, an outspoken nationalist and a decent man. He was tasked with developing grass roots support for the party in the frontier during the PPP’s formative years. After the PPP’s win in the 1970 election, he became known as Bhutto’s “lion of the Frontier”, synonymous with the “lion of the Punjab” Ghulam Mustafa Khar.
According to a tribute from the Daily Times:
“People who could not rival him in terms of performance and charisma turned against him and were baying for his blood. Sensing danger, his well-wishers advised him to avoid public meetings but he ignored them because he did not want to stay away from his people”
Hayat Khan Sherpao: The Turncoats
This is the second in a series of posts about the the murder of Hayat Muhammad Khan Sherpao, elder brother of Aftab Ahmed Sherpao.
Click here for the 1st part.
Click here for the 3rd part.
Click here for the 4th part.
Part 1 of the series outlined the event of the murder itself, and the mix of Cold War politics and ethnic turbulence that preceded it. Today's post attempts to examine what was happening within within Bhutto's PPP in the run up to the murder, and thereby identifies the second suspect.
Et Tu?
"A few months before his death he seriously considered leaving the Party altogether... Of all those around ZAB, Sherpao's personal devotion had been the greatest and his subsequent disillusionment was consequently the most profound."
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is in New York when Hayat Sherpao is murdered. He cancels his plans, flies back on the 8th and weeps at Sherpao's grave on the 9th. The PPP leadership is in attendance at the soyem, but their ranks were already divided.
The day after the funeral, the NAP is dissolved by the Government of Pakistan for "operating in a manner prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of Pakistan". Its leaders, including Wali Khan and Asfandyar Wali, are arrested.
The Turncoats
Prior to his death, Hayat Sherpao had considered leaving the party he had helped found. As is well known, he was not the only turncoat. Around the same time there had been a series of defections and resignations from the PPP. The most notable of which was that of Ahmad Raza Kasuri, whos father had been gunned down on the 9th of November 1974, less than three months before Hayat Khan Sherpao’s murder.
On the 20th of November, Kasuri famously turned up at the National Assembly carrying a bottle of blood and his fathers bloodstained shirts, vowing revenge. (On a slightly discordant note, Kasuri’s anger can be seen on video here, and is mercilessly but fairly made fun of here).
One of the PPP malcontents was Nisar Muhammad Khan, who was recently our caretaker Federal Minister for Housing and Works. After Sherpao's murder he was arrested along with Asfandyar Wali. Both were then imprisoned within Bala HIsaar Fortress in Peshawar, which is pictured below.
In his witness statement before the court, he stated:
"I have been falsely involved in this case, because of my difference with the Prime Minister of Pakistan."
The differences, he stated, started out over Bangladesh, and particularly whether that that key session of the Constituent Assembly in Dhaka should be boycotted. Following the disagreements, Nisar Khan was excluded from the party meetings. He began expressing his contrarian position directly to the press, and was consequentially expelled from the PPP. He states further:
"Several other founding members of the PPP were expelled from the party and not only expelled but they were jailed and insulted and shot at. Miraj Muhammad Khan and Mutkar Rana are examples of the same. Now Mr J.A Rahim has been expelled. He was fired upon and also beaten. Ahmad Raza Qasuri, M.N.A is another person to be quoted. The latest victim is Mr Khushid Hassan Meer. Mr Mahmood Ali Qasuri was also an active memmer of the PPP and so was his son and they have been expelled from the party."
It should also be clarified that when Nisar Khan talks about the elderly J.A Rahim being 'expelled', what he really means to say is that is that on the 3rd of July 1974, the night of his Rahim's 'expulsion', members of Bhutto's personal Federal Security Force climbed up the front balcony of the 71 year old man who had drafted the PPP's manifesto, entered his bedroom, beat him with rifle butts, threw him to the ground, beat up his son, dragged him out by his legs, threw him into a jeep and drove off with him. This occurred because Rahim had the audacity to complain earlier that evening, after Bhutto invited the cabinet for a dinner and then made them wait till midnight before dismissing them without having even met them. Specifically, Rahim had said the following.
"You bloody flunkies can wait as long as you like for the Maharaja of Larkana, I'm going home!"
Anyways, back to Nisar Khan. He continues:
"I told Mr Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that there was no need to have the landlords and the tenants clash with each other, I mean land owners, and it would have been better if an Ordinance had been promulgated finishing altogether private ownership. It is for these reasons, as also because the next general elections are coming near, that I have been involved in this case falsely."
So Who's to Blame?
Bhutto’s tactics vis-à-vis his opponents, both within the PPP and amongst the smaller provinces, were continuing to harden. The question is, was Hayat Khan Sherpao’s murder Bhutto’s most high profile purge? Or as is alleged by PPP stalwarts, the work of the 'anti-State' NAP, and it's hired assassins? That question was put to Asfandyar Wali in Bala Hisar, subsequent of course to some ‘moderate physical pressure’. His answer and story will follow tomorrow.
Following his arrest on suspicion of the murder of Hayat Sherpao, Asfandyar Wali is transported for his detention and locked in a cell somewhere inside Bala Hissar Fortress. After his dinner, Inspector Aurangzeb enters his cell and confronts him with the Police's case theory.
The Supposed Plot...
Inspector Aurangzeb tells Asfandyar that he has just returned from a meeting with the Inspector General of N.W.F.P Police. The I.G was apparently of the view that the murder of Hayat Sherpao was committed in immediate retaliation for the murder of Ahmad Raza Kasuri's father a few months back. The I.G also beleives that the decision to kill Sherpao was taken at a meeting that took place at Chaudhry Zahur Illahi's house in Lahore, with the following participants:
1. Wali Khan
2. Ahmad Reza Kasuri
3. Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi
4. Malik Muhammad Qasim
5.Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan
6. Mian Tufail Muhammad
Inspector Aurangzeb confronts Asfandyar with an allegation to the effect that after the meeting in Lahore, Wali Khan traveled back to the N.W.F.P and tasked Asfandyar with carrying out the murder. Asfandyar Wali obviously denies the charges.
It is interesting to see where each of the aforementioned individuals are today.
1. The late Wali Khan, father of Asfandyar Wali, hopefully requires no introduction by this stage.
2. As I mentioned in my first post in this series, On the 20th of November 1974, Kasuri famously turned up at the National Assembly carrying a bottle his fathers blood and his bloodstained shirt, vowing revenge against Bhutto. He was the primary complainant in the trial that resulted in the hanging of Bhutto. He also represented the Government in the Chief Justice case.
3. Zahoor Elahi fathered Chaudhry Shujaat (shown here with Shades & Ladies) who served briefly as Prime Minister and head of the civilian wing of Musharraf's Government.
4. Confusingly, Malik Muhammad Qasim was tried for treason during Zia's tenure, but the case was dropped. Despite his standing affiliation with the PML, he served as Federal Minister in Benazir's government in 1989, and was the Federal Minister for Railways during Musharraf's pre-election post emergency caretaker Government.
5. Nasrullah continued to wheel and deal with his Fez and Hookah until he died in 2003, and by establishing the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) laid the foundations for the promising (yet nauseatingly incestuous and mutually fellating) coalition government of Zardari-Bhutto-Sharif.
6. Mian Tufail Ahmed was Ameer of the Jama'at Islaami after Maududi, and a founding member of the United Democratic Front. Somewhere between 9-20 Pathan UDF workers were gunned down by Bhutto's FSF at a rally in Liaquat Bagh on the 23rd of March 1973 (Yet another irony that Benazir was assassinated on the same spot).
When Stephen Cohen is talks about a 'Pakistani Establishment', what hes saying is that the players never really change. They occasionally have children, switch sides and pick up new cronies but they never really change. Henry Kissinger recently observed:
"...the relation between Pakistan's three feudal-type organizations - the military and the major political parties - has more of the character of those among Italian city states during the Renaissance described by Machiavelli than of the party politics of traditional democracies.
They have occasionally made temporary alliances - as they appear to be doing now - for tactical purposes, but these have always proved preludes to new confrontations with the military appearing as arbiters in the end. The difference between feudal leaders who wear uniforms and those in civilian clothes is in their constituencies, not in their commitment to a pluralistic process as we understand it."
Kissinger's observations aren't really news to most Pakistanis. But still, for this 80's born naive young Pakistani, it is still jarring to realize how little has changed amongst Pakistan's political families and cliques over the last 40 odd years.
Anyways, back to Hayat Sherpao and Asfandyar Wali's jail time experience.
The subsequent 'Confession'
Interestingly, within the court transcripts, the sordid events and conversations that follow Asfandyar's denial are transliterated from Pushto/Urdu not simply in to equivalent English, but in to the Queens English. I would assume that this is to preserve the sobriety of the transcript, but it ends up coming across as some twisted Victorian parody of a South Asian S&M show .
"...Inspector Aurangzeb Shah called Hassan Gul A.S.I and asked him "Saman Rawara". Hasan Gul A.S.I Brought a small box which was opened by Inspector Auranzeb Shah and he took out two wooden replicas of the male organ and put the same in a table and asked me to choose between the two whether I wanted Wali Khan or Sardar Daud. I told him that I was not a fit person for the same and that the fittest person for those organs would be his wife or sister.
Thereupon Aurangzeb Shah inspector started slapping me and hitting me."
Thereupon indeed. Just as a reminder, Sardar Daud was the King of Afghanistan. And before it is assumed that naming the phalluses (phalli?) after the King of Afghanistan was something deviously original, below is an excerpt from the statement of another co-accused in the case who is also incarcerated at Bala Hisaar. According to Ahmad Farooq:
"Aurangzeb Shah Inspector again came to see me and told me that it was a last warning and that i Should agree. He then asked me if I was married. He then asked Hassan Gul A.S.I to bring the "Saman". Then Hassan Gul A.S.I brought something covered in white piece of cloth which was opened and it contained wooden male organs. Aurangzeb Shah Inspector told me that one of the wooden replicas of male organ was Ajmal Khattak and the other was Sardar Daud and that I was to choose between the two. Aurangzeb Shah Inspector told me that as I was unmarried he was going to make me unfit for marriage. He also told me that they could bring my father of family members in whos presence they could use the said wooden organs on me. At this time, I gave way. Honour is dear to everybody."
Everybody except for Sardar-Daud's-wooden-manhood-wielding Inspector Aurangzeb. Turning back to Asfandyar Wali , over the next few days the police proceed to tie him to a pillar and make him stand naked for extended periods of time while they electrocute him.
"Tamash Khan S.P said that I should think over [signing the confession] and that he would come again. After he left, DSP Akram Khan made me naked and tied my hands behind my back and forced me to swallow the salted water which he was putting in my mouth by force. I was made to drink four bottles of such water and they made me lie on the table, facing upwards.
"D.S.P Akram Khan had a string of plastic with which he tied my male organ tightly. A foot constable then came and he stood on my belly and started applying pressure with his feet on my belly.
After 5-6 minutes I lost consciousness and when I regained consciousness I found myself lying on the floor of the lockup with blood on the whole of the lower part of my body. When I went to ease myself, I urinated pure blood."
After sometime, D.S.P Akram Khan again came and said, "do you now agree?" I said "no." "
They police continue to torture Asfandyar Wali for some time. But he stubbornly refuses to sign the statement. In a scene which is almost comical, after torturing Asfandyar Wali and making him piss blood, the police end up begging him for a confession citing the fact their superiors 'have them by the balls':
"After 5/6 days Tamash Khan S.P again came to my cell and he said, which I quote; "Do you agree? We are helpless, above us is Abbas Khan D.I.G who is the cousin of the late Hayat Muhammad Khan Sherpao and he is not leaving our testicles, unless we make you agree to sign the statement."
Meanwhile, in another part of Bala Hissar, the police continue to turn the screws on Nisar Muhammad Khan. After some relativley light torture (mostly sleep deprivation and harassment), they cut to the chase.
"Niaz Gul S.P placed his hands on that Volume 1 of "Tafheem-ul-Quran" and swore that they, having exhausted all means to persuade me to agree to confess the guilt, were obliged to bring my wife and other females to me; and not only that but that they would disgrace them in my presence. He also warned me that even if that method did not bear fruit I would die in the cell.
I told Niaz Gul S.P that since he had taken oath on the Holy Book and our honour was involved, therefore with a view to save my honour and the honour of my family I told him that I was prepared to admit anything what they would ask me to do. "
Nisar Muhammad Khan is then taken to Asfandyar Wali's cell. He tells him of Niaz Gul's oath to sexually assault their women in front of them, and Asfandyar Wali finally agrees to sign the confession documents.
And there is another parralell. Above most torturers stands a person or a body convinced of a prisoners guilt. That party has the torturer by the "testicles". A confession must be elicited, so a confession is elicited. The confession is worth nothing, and leads the party who is relying upon it and everyone else, into a world of hell.
This is the fourth and final part in a series of posts about the murder of Hayat Khan Sherpao.
Click here for the 1st part.
Click here for the 2nd part.
Click here for the 3rd part.
The Relevance of the Verdict
The decision of the court in Asfandyar Wali v the State is an example of the manner in which Pakistan's superior courts often deal with our politically controlled (and patently incompetent) police forces.
The trial and verdict also shed some light on an issue that has been addressed by the authors of this blog on multiple occasions; namely the Pakistani fondness for conspiracy theories.
Also, just a quick note for those of you who are interested, the Judges in this case were Abdul Ghani Khan Khattak, and S. Usman Ali Shah, JJ.
The case was decided on the 13th of July 1977, 11 days after Bhutto was overthrown by Zia for the murder of Ahmed Raza Kasuri's father. The timing of the decision probably isn't a coincidence, and the judgment should be read accordingly.
'They did it. We saw them do it.'
Now obviously the police weren't charging Asfandyar Wali and Nisar Khan with actually having physically planted the bomb that killed Hayat Sherpao. Rather, the two were accused of having ordered the attack and supplied the bomb to the two young men who supposedly went on to plant it, namely Anwar Bacha and Amjad Ali.
Anwar Bacha was the nephew of Shahzad Gul Bacha, who was an NAP senator at the time, and who was also a senator during Musharrafs’ recent caretaker government.
There are no specific facts pertaining to the background of of Amjad Ali within the judgment.
One of the main difficulties faced by the prosecution was in establishing a connection between Amjad and Anwar on the one hand, and Asfandyar Wali and Nisar Khan on the other. Consequently, the testimony of the witnesses summoned to court primarily focused upon bridging that gap, and fell into three categories:
1) Cab drivers (who had transported Amjad and Anwar back and forth between Asfandyar Wali, Nisar Khan and the scene of the crime)
2) Police Officers (who encountered Amjad and Anwar at different locations around the city, most importantly at Asfandyar Walis house)
3) Relatives of the accused (who were said to have seen Amjad and Anwar with the alleged tape-recorder-bomb they obtained from Asfandyar)
'The Cab Drivers Saw Them...'
There were two main Cab Driver witnesses. Both were held at the police station for a considerable amount of time, casting serious doubt as to whether their factual account was actually their own. One of the cab drivers was said to have driven Amjad and Anwar to Asfandyar Walis address to enable them to pick up the tape recorder bomb.
That cab driver admitted:
A) that he had been arrested around the 20th of February.
B) that it took 12-13 days for his statement to be recorded.
C) that he had been in police custody since his arrest, up till the 16th of June, for nearly four months.
Unsurprisingly the court really wasn’t inspired with confidence, and his testimony didn't help matters:
"It appears that [Cab Driver No 1], a sworn witness, is trained in the art of manipulating things... Under the circumstances it would thus be highly imprudent to place any reliance on a person of this demeanor."
In relation to the other cab driver, I'll skip the prosecution's stupidities. By that stage an annoyed and exasperated High Court Bench had passed a number of snide remarks during the course of proceedings, and said:
"The Prosecution has indeed caused us all bewilderment in this case and thus at appropriate stages, we were driven to pass some remarks in order not only to refresh ourselves but to place our finder on its highly exaggerated account.
[Cab Driver No 2] has not satsifed the test of a truthful witness and thus, as a matter of sheer logic, it can be conveniently concluded that he had been arrayed as an impostor witness to depose in the case. "
'And So Did These Police Officers'
Tullas are generally pretty useless witnesses in Pakistan. Whats more, the prosecution's own stupidity in coercing the cab drivers hadn’t helped the credibility of their police witnesses. The court noted:
“It is a matter of record that in the present case a good many witness were forced by the investigating agency to appear in the witness box …"
The Judges didn't think that the police officers were any exception. Of particularly annoyance to the court was the fact that it took the investigating agency two months to record a key police officers statement, despite the fact that the officer in question had been on permanent duty snooping outside Asfandyar Walis house for two and a half years prior to the murder, and was consequently well known to the investigating agencies. The Judges wondered out loud as to why he wasn't called to give a statement the moment Asfandyar Wali was arrested.
It was held that all of this meant:
“[The witness] must be held to have spoken in the case what was suggested to him by his fellow men in the investigating agency.”
In other words, they took some time to make the case up, and then belatedly informed the police officer to give a statement to that effect.
'And We Also Have Some Insane Relatives of the Accused...'
Another central prosecution witness was one Mr.Mian Mohibbudin. He was the cousin of Ahmed Farooq (one of the co accused who Inspector Aurangzeb had threatened with Sardar Daud’s penis replica).
On Mohibbudin’s own bizarre account, he developed some mental health issue and was admitted to hospital on the 7th of February, the day prior to the murder. He said that Anwar and Amjad came to visit him in hospital on that same day whilst carrying the tape recorder bomb with them.
During his cross examination however, Mohibbudin admitted that his father was in the Peoples Party and that the PPP side of his family had been having an armed squabble with Ahmed Farooq’s NAP side of his family for some time.
The Court asked the obvious question as to why the Amjad and Anwar would:
A) carry a tape-recorder-bomb around everywhere openly like complete idiots;
B) visit a mental patient the day before the murder for absolutely no reason;
C) show the mental patient the tape-recorder bomb despite the fact that he was the familial arch nemesis of their co-conspirator Ahmad Farooq.
The Court took Mohibbudin to be a partisan witness, and seemed to be quite annoyed with him. When discussing the standard of scrutiny to be applied another police witness, they gratuitously referred back to him saying:
“Fortunately, [this other witness] is not a mental case like Police Witness Mian Mohibuddin, in order that he should be shown any indulgence.”
So to cut an extremely long and convoluted transcript short, the testimony of all the police witness was taken to be concocted, inconsistent ramble.
The Confessions, and the Final Verdict
At this dire stage in the verdict, the prosecution must have been hoping beyond hope that their phallus induced confessions would rescue their case. It is worth reading what the Court's verdict on this point:
"In the circumstances of the case we feel convinced that the accused appellants were subjected to mental as well as physical tortures. Unfortunately, a Senior Minister of the Provincial Governments had suffered his death in the incident. Therefore the police cannot be expected to have submitted a report to the higher authorities that as a result of their investigation, the culprit's were not traced.
In view of this, it would therefore be obvious that once the police laid their hands on the accused appellants in this case they would not have left them excused until they were obliged to confess that they were responsible for the crime.
In a case of this nature it is a matter of common knowledge that the police must have employed all methods of physical violence against the accused appellants to agree to the making of the so called confessions. The practice f subjecting the accused to physical violence is yet to be a forgone myth in this Sub Continent.
"...[With] regard to Asfandryar Wali and Nisar Muhammad Khan accused appellants, it is also a matter of record that hey remained in the custody of the police for over one and a half months and were never produced before any magistrate. In the circumstances the assertion of the accused appellants that the confessions were extorted from them under duress must be taken of by the court."
"...We regret to observe that the treatment meted out to the accused appellants while they were in police custody was an act of wanton assault directed against the sanctity of human dignity which is impermissible in a civilized society."
The case pretty much ended there. The Court even held that the tape recorder couldnt have contained the bomb, as it was alleged to have been placed at some distance, whereas the explosion came from under Sherpao's feet. Asfandyar Wali, Nisar Khan, Ahmad Farooq, and the NAP were consequently acquitted.
I do not know what happened to Senator Bacha's son and the illustrious Amjad.
A Brief Note on The Hyderabad Tribunal
The Hyderabad Tribunal that ran concurrently with the trial was equally and widely regarded as a farce. Bhutto's government prepared a detailed reference to the Supreme Court, seeking to legally confirm the banning the NAP. The reference, alleged that the NAP was an anti-state political organization, and was bent upon destroying Pakistan in accordance with Sardar Daud's pro-soviet Afghan government.
Wali Khan, and 50 odd Bhutto opponents from the Frontier and Baluchistan were tried for high treason inside Hyderabad jail (hence the name). The Tribunal was headed by Chief Justice Hamood-ur Rehman. While all 50+ were acquitted of the charge of murdering Hayat Khan Sherpao, the decision to ban the NAP for their successionist activities was upheld by the Supreme Court.
As with Asfandyar Wali vs The State, the incompetence of the prosecution continued to be met with contempt from the Wali Khans. At one stage, the prosecution alleged that Wali Khan had been sent Rs 20 million by Indira Gandhi through a certain emissary, presumably to further his anti-state agenda.
Wali Khan (being Wali Khan) promptly sued the emissary, hoping either to recover the Rs 20 million allegedly sent, or at least to prove a point. He figured that if he was going to be charged with receiving the bribe, he he might as well receive it and enjoy it.
Much like in the May 12th inquest, the Government used a standard delay & overwhelm tactic, and bombarded the court with witnesses, specifically about 455 of them. It took over two years to go through the testimony of 22 of those witnesses. Annoyed and exasperated, Wali Khan went on another (justified) rant. Try and picture Hamood-ur Rehman's face when Wali Khan tells him:
“My Lord, please arrange “Aabe-Hayat” (the alexir of life) for us so that we could live till the completion of the proceedings of this trial.
Take it yourself also to enable your honor to write the judgment in this case. After completion of the proceedings, give it to Mr. Bhutto also so that he could live till the decision of the case.
Producing only 22 witnesses in two and a half years means that a half century will be required to hear the statements of witnesses of the prosecution and the same number of years will be required for their cross examination.”
Eventually Wali Khan got bored with trying to defend himself and resigned himself to his fate, declaring that the tribunal included biased judges and that a decision to convict had already been made.
Fortunately for him, Bhutto was eventually overthrown (and hung). General Zia-ul Haq wound up the Hyderabad tribunal, and by 1979 all the detainees were released back into politics.
The Theories
So despite the public outcry, the banning of the NAP, the nationwide arrests, the investigation, the convoluted accusations, the detentions, the torture and not least the whole High Court Trial, Supreme Court Trial and Hyderabad Tribunal, the central question as to who killed Hayat Khan Sherpao remains unanswered.
It seems the Pakistani way of resolving any issue (be it the question of a murder or our national identity) is to run around in circles until everyone is utterly fed up, and then drop the debate altogether because by then some other crises will have come up anyway. Every gaping hole in consensus is thereby allowed to persist and is instead ignored as much as it can be.
Anyway. To add to the conspiracy theories put forward by the prosecution and the state, here are some other tales that filled that particular void of information. Who knows, one might even be true.
Bhutto Murdered Sherpao:
(1) Because of his impending desertion/defection to the NAP, and/or
(2) Because Sherpao and Benazir had crushes on each other OR had an affair OR had been discussing marriage AND ZAB wanted Benazir to marry Amin Makhdoom Fahim, and/or
(3) Because Sherpao didn't want to desert or defect but rather wanted to lead a coup within the PPP and intended to supplant ZAB as leader and/or
(4) Because Bhutto needed someone senior enough to die who's death he could plausibly blame on the NAP and thereby have an excuse to ban the party and arrest the last of his opponents.
Some of these issues referred to here in (1) and (3) were alluded to in part 2 of the series. My problem with this set of theories is that Aftab Ahmed Sherpao (Hayats younger brother) was a PPP minister under Benazir for quite some time until he parted ways with his PPP(Sherpao Group). Why would he do so if genuinely thought that her father murdered his brother? I suppose you could answer that by saying that the daughters appreciation for Hayat Khan was well known and therefore she was not tainted by her fathers actions.
On (2), the supposed love triangle of Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Benazir and Hayat Khan Sherpao is a little rich. It would add an interesting dimension to Zardari's treatment of Amin Fahim, but really thats probably just wishful speculation.
On (4), this is pretty flawed. The fact that the NAP was exonerated for the murder runs contrary to any conspiracy premised on an intention to blame them. The charge that they killed him may have been conveniently possible following Sherpao's death, but it makes no sense that it was the motivating cause of the murder.
(B) KHAD and/or the KGB assassinated Sherpao
Ostensibly I suppose their Sherpao's death could be seen as a cold war assassination. But I cannot see how the killing of Bhutto's lieutenant would assist their agenda in any meaningful respect. It simply provided Bhutto with a popular basis upon which to neuter the NAP, KHAD's supposed allies in Pakistan.
Conclusion:
There are plenty of questions that will remain unanswered. There is no conclusion. Until Pakistan's current model of dynastic party politics matures into something altogether more democratic and civilized, the country will continue to lose its leaders to violence for the foreseeable future. Hayat Khan Sherpao's death should serve as a reminder of that.
