Shirr, I had nothing to do with it

So Pervez Musharraf will be questioned in connection with the murder of Benazir Bhutto. Via a questionnaire, it was reported, not in an interrogation chamber. He can consider the questions over days, while taking walks in Hyde Park perhaps, and then get back to the Federal Investigation Agency and tell them: “Shirr, I had nothing to do with it.” (sic)

Political assassinations in the subcontinent have a poor history where closure is concerned. In part, this is because they are fairly well-planned. In part, this is because they are subsequently handled by governments with their own agendas.

Part of the planning goes into the destruction of evidence post the act. I remember the images broadcast right after Benazir Bhutto’s murder. The scene of the crime being hosed down. If Watson or Hastings had got there the next morning, they would probably have reported that nothing of consequence had happened. If Holmes or Poirot happened to pass by, however, they would have smelled the blood over the aroma of the disinfectant. And they would have likely said, they have a case on their hands. The clean-up proved it.

Clean-ups are part of the murder game. In the case of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s murder in Bangladesh, the pictures of the bodies in the house were confiscated in a late night raid on a newspaper. Just one picture remains.

In the case of the Bhutto murder, at least there are some pictures, including those of the clean-up. Who asked those who were hosing the place to do so? A senior, obviously. And who asked the senior? A senior of his, clearly. This was the murder of a former prime minister, someone poised to take power again. So who was the senior’s senior? Perhaps it’s better to go bottom-up on the investigation rather than disturb a former dictator’s morning walks in London. “Shirr, I had nothing to do with it”, he will say. What else can he say?

There are at least two similarities between the murder of Benazir Bhutto and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Both were (relatively) young leaders who had been out of power but primed to make a comeback when they were cut down.

We know (but perhaps not quite) who killed Rajiv Gandhi. This took many years to find out and many files piled up at the offices of the Special Investigation Team and the Jain Commission which was probing the conspiracy. Each of these files had political value. At least one aspect of the investigation was used politically.

In 1998, the Jain Commission’s report was leaked. It said that those in power in the southern state of Tamil Nadu had a hand in Rajiv’s killing. This was the DMK, old friends of the LTTE, and partners in a coalition government led by I K Gujral. Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress was sitting out of power, but supporting the coalition from the outside. They withdrew their support in outrage and indignation. That government fell.

The Congress and the DMK are now allies.

In Nepal, there was the palace shooting in the summer of 2001. A bizarre episode in which the purported killer (King Birendra’s son Dipendra) was crowned king as he lay unconscious from allegedly self-inflicted gunshot wounds and died within days, paving the way to Narayanhiti Palace for his uncle Gyanendra.

Gyanendra and his son Paras were not the most popular people in Nepal. They found Paras’s reportedly heroic role in the massacre somewhat incredible. On the streets of Kathmandu, they said: “Gyane did it.”

The upshot of that killing, too, was political: the monarchy collapsed in Nepal. It is argued that anarchy has followed.

But what of each murder? What about the evil under the sun? In different accents, depending on where they come from in our subcontinent, they all say the same thing: “Shirr, I had nothing to do with it.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2010.