KARACHI, Jan 16: Altaf Hussain has called for reopening the Bhutto case as he was executed `immorally and illegally’. The chief of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement was addressing a gathering in Malir over telephone from London on Monday night.

Mr Altaf condemned the bigwigs of the People’s Party for keeping silent after the execution of the party’s founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

“While the party’s workers braved the might of the government, the PPP’s feudal lords acted dumb,” Mr Altaf said.

He criticised intellectuals for misrepresenting Mr Bhutto’s hanging as a Sindh issue rather than a `national tragedy’.

The MQM chief alleged the establishment first tricked Murtaza Bhutto into returning to Pakistan and then eliminated him.

Mr Altaf said `mysterious maps’ were circulating these days, showing a reshaped South Asia. “Balochistan and NWFP have been shown as having seceded from Pakistan. This is ominous.”

He said the people of Pakistan should rise up against the `conspiracy to break up Pakistan’.

The MQM leader said Sindhis should not allow `waderas to barter away their rights’.

“A forget-and-forgive approach is the need of the hour. All linguistic and ethnic groups must overcome prejudices and get united to foil evil designs of the high and mighty.”

ADDRESS TO ULEMA: In a telephonic address to religious scholars on Tuesday, Altaf Hussain said the Ummah was passing through a `precarious phase’.