ISLAMABAD, July 25: The Supreme Court was urged through a petition on Monday to initiate criminal proceedings against former president Pervez Musharraf and others for allegedly preparing and executing the plan to assassinate Benazir Bhutto.

Petitioner Mohammad Aslam Chaudhry, who served as Ms Bhutto’s protocol officer for 21 years, has in fact challenged the dismissal of his plea by the Lahore High Court for registration of a second FIR in the PPP leader’s assassination case.

Mr Chaudhry pointed out that he was an eyewitness of the incident and therefore mentioned the names of and roles played by the accused.

Besides Gen Musharraf, he has nominated as respondents in his petition former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, former law minister Babar Awan, the then acting interior minister Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz, former director general of Intelligence Bureau Ijaz Hussain Shah and former interior secretary Syed Kamal Shah.

The petitioner said Gen (retd) Musharraf was the key person who would have gained most from Ms Bhutto’s death because she was one of his main election rivals. He said Gen Musharraf, Ijaz Shah and Mr Elahi were among those named by Ms Bhutto as her would-be assassins, but none of them had been charged with her murder.

The petition said that Rehman Malik was a major financial beneficiary of Ms Bhutto’s death because he was her partner in Petroline FZC company which held two bank accounts in a Spanish bank.

It said the cause of Ms Bhutto’s death had not yet been confirmed and the fact that she died because of injuries sustained from laser beam shots had not even been considered as a possibility. It pointed out that the crime scene was washed before any forensic examination was carried out.

He said the Lahore High Court had `ignored’ several questions while dismissing his petition, including deliberate destruction of the crime scene and burial of 21 dead bodies without autopsy.

The petitioner said it should be seen as to what was the link between the incidents that took place at Karsaz in Karachi and Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh. Both incidents took place when Mr Musharraf was in power with Ms Bhutto as the target and in both cases the crime scenes were hosed down within hours of the incidents.