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| 02 November 2004 | Tuesday | 18 Ramazan 1425 |
Mian Sharif laid to rest
LAHORE, Nov 1: Mian Muhammad Sharif was laid to rest on Monday in a prematurely harvested millet field, some three furlongs west of the deserted palatial Raiwind farm residences of the Sharifs. The grave had been checked for security before the burial.
Relatives, leaders of various political parties and personal friends of Mian Sharif and his sons Nawaz and Shahbaz attended the funeral prayers led by Dr Sarfraz Naeemi.
Wailing women criticized President Pervez Musharraf for not allowing members of the exiled Sharif family to come to Pakistan on the occasion. Some bemoaned this attitude as inhuman, though Information Minister Sheikh Rashid is reported to have said in a statement that the government would have allowed the exiled leaders to return for a few days if they had made a formal request.
Mian Sharif's is the only grave in the area as there is no graveyard in or around the 360-acre farm where the Sharifs had shifted their residences a few years before being overthrown in 1999. Hundreds of eucalyptus trees are there on the farm.
The burial plan was changed shortly after the body arrived at the Raiwind farms by a helicopter, which landed on a new helipad only metres away from the resting place earmarked for the head of the Sharif family, who had died of heart ailment in Jeddah on Friday. The authorities did not allow the use of the old helipad where Mian Nawaz Sharif used to land as prime minister.
As the mourners had lined up for the prayers at Raiwind at about 10:30am, it was announced that the schedule had been changed a bit and the 'ghaibana' funeral prayers would be held at the Data Darbar mosque before the one at Raiwind. And during the intervening period the body would be kept at a mortuary.
Most of those present on the occasion went to the Data Darbar where they were joined in by hundreds of people.
Prominent among them were former president Rafiq Tarar, former PML chief Mian Azhar, PML-N's Raja Zafarul Haq, Saranjam Khan, Pir Sabir Shah, Ghulam Dastgir Khan, Hamza Shahbaz, Elahi Bakhsh Soomro, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Siddiqul Farooq, Khwaja Hassaan, Zulfikar Khosa, Inamullah Niazi, Mohammad Mahdi, ARD/PPP leaders Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Nafees Siddiqui, Qasim Zia and Naveed Chaudhry, MMA's Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Pir Ijaz Hashmi, Hafiz Salman Butt, Munir Husain Gilani, PTI's Imran Khan, former ambassador Ataul Haq Qasmi and Dr Shaharyar Sheikh.
It is said that Mian Nawaz Sharif himself had phoned some leaders directing them to attend the funeral prayers at Data Darbar.
After the prayers, various groups of charged activists shouted slogans against Gen Musharraf and the Chaudhrys of Gujrat on the Circular Road outside the shrine.
Traffic remained suspended for a brief period as people soon left for Raiwind to attend the funeral prayers there.
Earlier, the body was brought from Karachi to Lahore by a PIA flight but was not handed over to the PML-N leaders or family members present at the airport. Instead, it was shifted to Jati Umra, Raiwind, in a helicopter.
They were told that in the presence of a caretaker coming from Jeddah the body could not be given into their custody.
Leaders who had managed to reach the airport reportedly after negotiations with the SP Cantt included Raja Zafarul Haq, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Saranjam Khan, Zulfikar Khosa, Tehmina Daultana, Zaeem Qadri, Farrukh Shah and Kamran Michael.
Heavy contingents of police were deployed and barricades were erected at all squares to prevent 'irrelevant' people from reaching the airport.
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