June 25, 2007	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 09, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 24: The Canadian government has declined to fund a visit by Canadian doctors for the second autopsy of Kafila Siddiqui, who died under mysterious circumstance in a house she shared with a former minister.

Informed sources told Dawn that Canadian High Commission in Islamabad had asked Ms Siddiqui’s family to make their own financial arrangements for the second autopsy.

When contacted, Ms Siddiqui’s brother Mustafa Qayyum said the family was coordinating with the Canadian High Commission and things would become clearer by the end of the week.

The Sindh government has granted permission to the family of Ms Siddiqui to exhume her body for another autopsy.

Ms Siddiqui’s husband Salman Qasir is in Karachi for arrangements for the second autopsy and to bring Canadian doctors to Pakistan.

Mr Qayyum said Ms Siddiqui’s family was trying to constitute a medical board comprising Canadian and Pakistani doctors for an independent autopsy.

He said family members of Ms Siddiqui had sent her autopsy report to Chief Forensic Officer in the USA who described the report as “haphazard”.

The autopsy conducted at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) on June 9, had failed to establish the cause of her death.

The chemical examination report for poison and the histopathology report of were negative and failed to ascertain the actual cause of death.

The sources said the condition of the former minister for communications Mohammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi was still critical and he would be produced in the court on Thursday if there was an improvement in his condition.

The sources said that a blood sample of the deceased had been sent to a serologist to determine if the deceased suffered from any disease.

Clothes of Ms Siddiqui had also been sent for a DNA test as these had some blood stains, the sources said, adding that her body did not have marks of any injury.