RAWALPINDI, Jan 29: The Benazir Bhutto murder case took a new turn on Tuesday when an anti-terrorism court summoned the record of an old inquiry conducted by a team headed by the then Punjab law secretary about the washing of the crime scene.

ATC judge Chaudhry Habibur Rehman summoned statements of witnesses Dr Abdul Rehman and Ghulam Mohammad Naz of Rescue 1122 recorded before the inquiry team headed by then Punjab law secretary Farooq Ahmed Sheikh in February 2008.

Unlike Federal Investigation Agency’s joint investigation team which held Saud Aziz, then Rawalpindi city police officer, and Khurram Shehzad, then Rawal Town superintendent of police, responsible for the murder, the Farooq Sheikh inquiry team took a lenient view and did not accuse them of breaching security or destroying evidence.

The FIA implicated the two officers in 2010 for “breach of security and ordering the washing of the crime scene”.

The two witnesses recorded their statements before the ATC this month.

Malik Rafique, the counsel of Khurram Shehzad, had requested the court to summon the statements.

“I wanted to examine the statements of witnesses which they recorded in 2008 and 2013,” he told the court.

If there was any discrepancy in the statements, his client would get the benefit of the doubt, advocate Rafique told Dawn.

When contacted, Barrister Salman Safdar, the counsel of Saud Aziz, said the findings of the Farooq Sheikh inquiry team were in favour of his client.

FIA’ special prosecutor opposed the summoning of record and said the investigation had been completed.

According to him, the court could not summon any additional record except what had been mentioned in the report submitted by the FIA because it would distract the direction and delay the matter.

He said that under the Anti Terrorism Act of 1997 the case should have been decided within months, but it had been pending since 2008 because of delaying tactics of the accused.