July 27, 2007	Friday	Rajab 11, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 26: A murder charge was added on Thursday to the case already registered against the former minister of state for communications, Mohammad Shahid Jamil Qureshi, the police said.

The section 302 (Qatl-i-Amd) had been included in the light of the second autopsy report, which revealed that the Pakistani- born Canadian national Kafila Siddiqui was subjected to torture using a blunt object and her skull was also fractured.

Another section (PPC 201) for causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender is also most likely to be added to the FIR, the police added.

According to the police, the former state minister had cleaned the room of Ms Siddiqui to hide the evidence. He removed vomit and also altered the room setting.

Ms Kafila died in mysterious circumstance on June 9 in a house that she shared with the former minister. The room occupied by the deceased was neat and clean when the police reached the house to collect evidence after three days of the incident.

The death of Ms Siddiqui was shrouded in various mysteries like she was brought to the emergency ward of the Pims hospital at 2:07am by the former minister, however, the minister reportedly claimed that he found her lying on the floor of her room in a pool of vomit at around 10:30pm.

The former minister repeatedly said that doctors told him that Ms Siddiqui died an hour before she was brought to the hospital. If she arrived in hospital after 2:00am than she must have died at around 1:00am, sources said.

According to data received from the National Highways and Motorway Police, Mr Qureshi travelling in his official Honda VTi car (GA-8581) entered the Motorway (M-2) at around 11:30pm, but returned from Kalar Kahar at around 1:40am.

The sources said he straight away went to the Pakistan Institute Medical Sciences (Pims) where he dropped Kafila Siddiqui who was pronounced dead by the doctors.