June 21, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 05, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 20: Canadian doctors are likely to conduct another autopsy on Kafila Siddiqui, a Canadian national, who died under mysterious circumstances on June 9 in the house she shared with former state minister for communications.

Mustafa Qayyum, brother of Ms Siddiqui, told Dawn that the family members had requested the Canadian High Commission to help them in conducting another autopsy, to which they had given a ‘go-ahead’ signal.

Mr Qayyum said they wanted to conduct an independent autopsy and in this regard services of Canadian doctors would be utilised.

“We are waiting for the chemical examiner’s report from Lahore and after receiving it we would decide to conduct another autopsy,” he added.

He said they were suspicious of the autopsy report and suspected that the chemical examiner’s report could not be based on facts.

Earlier Senior Superintendent of Police Islamabad Zafar Iqbal had asked the family members for another autopsy on June 11, but they had refused to do so.

Mr Qayyum had taken the body of Ms Siddiqui to Karachi after the autopsy on Saturday (June 9) where she was buried in a local graveyard.

The sources said the family members of the deceased had submitted an application in the office of the deputy commissioner Islamabad to exhume Ms Siddiqui’s body in order to conduct another postmortem.

In this regard the assistant commissioner Saddar circle, Rana Akbar Hayat, recorded the statements of applicants (Ms Siddiqui’s family members) and investigation officers and sent a recommendation to DC office to exhume the body, the sources said.

They said on the recommendation of assistant commissioner, the deputy commissioner, Mohammad Ali, had sent a summary to Chief Commissioner Office to request the Sindh government for exhumation of the body.

After recording the statements of the police officials and other persons related to the former minister, the DC office has sent a request to the home department for exhuming the body.

Meanwhile, the local police took another remand of former minister’s driver and cook from the court of senior civil judge.

Allahyar, cook, and Zulfiqar, driver, were presented in the court of Senior Civil Judge Abid Rizwan Abid for seeking remand, where the judge remanded them in police custody for another three days.

The police claimed that both were arrested on Saturday (June 16), and later presented in the court of duty magistrate on Sunday, where the judge remanded them in police custody for two days.

The sources said both of them were picked up by the police on June 9, but released when the former minister filed a petition in the court of law for their release on Friday (June 15). However, they were again arrested within 12 hours last Saturday, they added.