There once was a man - Mohammad Ali Jinnah - who by the sheer force of an indomitable will carved out a country wherein his brethren could live and thrive in peace and prosperity. He did it without mounting a single hunger strike, without spending a single day in jail. He worked hard, and he lived well according to his own taste and style.

Three days before the Dominion of Pakistan came into being, on August 11, 1947, over half a century ago, Jinnah addressed the members of his constituent assembly and, clearly and firmly, he told them that religion was a matter between a man and his God and was 'not the business of the State'.

A man of perception, having seen the beginnings of Pakistan, shortly before he died, he predicted that each successive government of the new nation would prove to be worse than its predecessor. History has shown how right he was.

Fatima, one of Jinnah's sisters, a dentist by profession, never married and abandoning her profession decided to tag along with her ambitious and able brother, a widower. She was a parsimonious woman, eternally at war with the world. She had no influence over her brother's political life and had little to do with the making of Pakistan, with its subsequent breaking, or with its mythical ideology. Someone once dubbed her madar-i-millat, and the appellation stuck.

Now, after reading the July 22 front-page news of Jadoogar of Jeddah Sharifuddin Pirzada's startling disclosure that Fatima's death was not a natural death but, in conformation with the rumours that arose 36 years ago, in 1967, when she was found dead in her bed, there had been foul play, I did what we all do in Pakistan and 'rushed', not to the scene of the crime, but to the telephone and rang Sharifuddin. What are you pulling out of your hat this time, I asked him, by threatening to reveal 'all' on August 14? The press had got it wrong, he said.

When leaving a conference held on Fatima's life and doings in Islamabad on the 21st, he was waylaid by reporters who badgered him about the old and set rumours relating to her death, and demanded that he come out with the truth. So he did - the truth to the best of his knowledge, based on what he had been told or had learnt (as he was not in Pakistan when she died).

He was told some days after her death by her nephew, Akbar Pirbai, who had arrived in Karachi from Bombay, that he was convinced that his aunt had been murdered by a disgruntled servant, that he wished to meet President Ayub Khan and request that an enquiry be held. A meeting was arranged, and Ayub Khan, sensibly, considering the bitterness that had followed and persisted after Fatima's defeat in the 1964 elections, and considering that emotions run high in Pakistan at the slightest excuse, suggested that nothing be done.

Those who found her dead were obviously as sensible as was President Ayub Khan and wisely let it be known to the people that Fatima had died a natural death.

Sharifuddin said he would send me a report on the incident written by the then commissioner of Karachi, Syed Darbar Ali Shah, who in 1983, some sixteen years later, at Sharifuddin's request, had put on paper his recollections of her death and funeral. He would also send an excerpt from a book. 'Fatima Jinnah' written by Dr Agha Hussain Hamadani, of which the National Book Foundation has recently published the English translation. (Anyone interested who wishes to be further confused can get a copy of Darbar Ali's note, written in typical bureaucratese, from my friend the Jadoogar, the weaver of magic spells.)

News travelled at a relaxed pace in those far off days of 1967. Darbar Ali was in his office when he was rung up by his sister, who had been rung up by Lady Sughra Hidayatullah (widow of jolly old Sir Ghulam Hussain affectionately known to his friends as 'Sir Sahib'), who had been visited by Fatima's dhobi, who had been to Mohatta Palace that morning, rung the doorbell, and had received no response. Lady H and the dhobi hurried back, she managed to get into the house, and they had found Fatima dead. Darbar Ali immediately rang the Deputy Inspector General of Police for further information, only to find that he also had not heard the news.

They both 'rushed' to Mohatta Palace where they found a crowd had collected. The press was already on the scene, as were Fatima's family doctors, Colonels Shah and Jafar. Darbar saw the body on the bed, covered by a sheet, with her face exposed. He described it: "I found the agony of death clearly visible on the noble face. Her hair was also in disarray and her neck veins looked abnormally rigid." He confirmed that the pronouncement of the two doctors, highly respected and trusted, that she had died a natural death "was a great blessing for the preservation of peace in Karachi.... Had it not been so or had any suspicion arisen about the cause of her death at the time of her funeral procession, there might have been widespread riots and unnecessary bloodshed."

But, as wrote Darbar Ali: "In spite of the pronouncements of the doctors, many still suspected the actual cause of her death and thought that she had either been strangulated or done to death through some violent means. Since her cook disappeared at the time of her death many accused him of the dastardly act...... Some ladies who happened to be the friends of the deceased also started a whispering campaign that they had noticed scars on her neck on closer examination. They further alleged that they had also seen marks of violence and even blood on her body."

No enquiry was held. The mystery of the missing cook was never solved.

Hamadani, in his book, recounts : "In the year 1971, some information about Miss Jinnah's death surfaced. These were exposed by a team of washers of the dead body. It consisted of 67-year old Haji Kalloo and his associates. They indicated that: on her body there were a number of deep wounds; her body had numerous blows; on her neck there appeared a wound, four inches in length; her knees were also wounded; swelling was visible on her cheek; her body was cramped, having blue colour."

Long ago, I was told by a relative (by marriage) of Jinnah's sister Mariam Bai, who I happen to know, that on the morning of Fatima's death Lady Hidayatullah rang his mother, and told her that there was no response when the Mohatta Palace servants rang the doorbell. Lady H said she would like to be picked up and they would together go and see what was happening. They somehow managed to get into the house, went up to the bedroom, and found what they assumed to be a sleeping Auntie Fatima. She was lying on her bed, undisturbed and peaceful, but, on closer inspection, dead. She had apparently died in her sleep.

There are the two conflicting accounts. Take your pick, as we will never know the truth, truth being foreign to the ethos of Pakistan and its handlers and mishandlers. There will be no earth shaking truthful disclosure on August 14, or on any other day, by the Jadoogar or by anyone else.