LAHORE, Oct 16: Federal minister Mahmood Ali has demanded fresh inquiry into the assassination of Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan to determine what vested interests and foreign elements were behind the heinous crime.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Nazaria-i-Pakistan foundation and Pakistan Movement Workers Trust held on Thursday to observe the 52nd death anniversary of Pakistan’s first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan.

Mr Ali said the killer of the Nawabzada, Said Akbar, had neither personal enmity nor any connection with him. He was hired by some conspirators to shoot him who had killed Said on the spot to hide their crime.

He claimed that once at a lawyers’ meeting he had said that he knew the main culprit behind the crime. “I received a letter from a lawyer advising me not to give such statements as I might also be killed.”

“Nevertheless, there is need for revealing the truth by holding fresh inquiry,” he added.

The sought another inquiry into the circumstances which had led to the imposition of martial law on October 7, 1958. The martial law was imposed a few days after leaders of all political parties had held a meeting with the then prime minister Malik Feroze Khan Noon urging him to hold general elections under the 1956 Constitution giving him the assurance that the elections would be peaceful. The meeting had fixed February 16, 1959 as the polling date and the people had started election preparations.

“What had happened during the period after the politicians had met the prime minister in last week of September and the day the martial law was declared on October 7.”

He said Liaquat Ali Khan presented what was called ‘poor man’s budget’ of India when he was finance minister in the interim cabinet before the partition. The budget had given much relief to the common man and imposed heavy taxes on the rich who were mostly Hindus who had expressed great resentment.

He also debunked the propaganda by certain political elements that Pakistan had been achieved with the blessing of the British. Had there been the British hand in making of Pakistan then it would not have been what was described as “truncated and moth-eaten and incomplete Pakistan” since the Muslim League had demanded the whole of the Punjab, Sindh, the NWFP, Balochistan, a part of UP in the west and the whole of Bengal, Assam and some parts of Bihar, he said.

“We had snatched Pakistan from the clutches of the British and the Hindus under the leadership of the Quaid-i-Azam by the force of argument and political means as both of them never wanted to give a separate homeland to the Muslims of the subcontinent.”

Rich tributes were paid to Liaquat Ali Khan by Dr Rafiq Ahmad, Dr Muniruddin Chughtai, Brig Hamid Saeed (retired), Dr M. A. Soofi, Shahid Rashid, Inam Najmi and others.