KARACHI, Jan 4: As the Scotland Yard team of investigators reached the federal capital to probe the assassination of PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto on Friday, there was concern in various quarters about the harsh tone adopted by political adversaries and the distortion of facts in the blame game.

The Scotland Yard team has reached Pakistan despite the Pakistan People’s Party’s refusal to accept a probe by that agency and its insistence on a UN-sponsored commission on the pattern of the Hariri Commission.

People at large, particularly PPP supporters, were apprehensive about the holding of elections on Feb 18 following the charged press conference and public rally addressed by former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, who has been accused of deliberately linking ethnicity with the criminal activity that followed Ms Bhutto’s murder. They were also concerned about the hardening of respective positions following the blame game.

Questions are being asked as to why the former ruling party’s leaders are taking this course of confrontation and why they were not taking satisfactory measures to allow a peaceful campaign to ensure fair elections.

Abdullah Jan, a resident of Lyari, was surprised to note President Pervez Musharraf, Pervez Elahi and former Sindh chief minister Dr Arbab Rahim accusing Ms Bhutto’s government of not inviting foreign experts to investigate Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s murder during her rule.

“I am worried because the official record is being deliberately twisted for some ulterior motive,” he said, referring to a foreign radio report in which it was recalled that Scotland Yard’s experts had also visited Pakistan to investigate the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan and Murtaza Bhutto.

It may be pointed out that a six member team of experts from London had arrived here on Oct 28 to conduct fresh investigations into the Sept 20, 1996, murder of Murtaza Bhutto. The team had visited the scene of the crime and residence of late SHO Haq Nawaz Siyal, but after the dismissal of Ms Bhutto’s government the team was asked to pack up and leave the investigation while Murtaza Bhutto’s uncle, Mumtaz Bhutto, was leading the caretaker administration in Sindh.

When former senator Taj Haider was contacted, he confirmed that the team of foreign experts had visited Pakistan on the initiative of the Benazir government. He was surprised that after her assassination the demand of those who are affected is not being met.

He said the government of Ms Bhutto had invited experts from Scotland Yard to investigate the murder of Murtaza Bhutto in cooperation with local investigators.

These investigators started their work in a very scientific manner. They called all the witnesses and used vehicles to the spot where the gruesome murder had taken place and recreated the scene of the murder.