As protests over the killing of Balochistan leader Nawab Akbar Bugti continued, media reports on Saturday quoted Bugti's son and his other relatives as expressing doubts over whether the coffin buried in a Dera Bugti graveyard really contained the body of the Baloch nationalist leader.
Bugti's son Jamal told The News that the family had asked the government to hand over the body to the family in Balochistan's capital of Quetta as the late leader's heirs were present there but the authorities decided against it and carried out the burial at Dera Bugti.
Jamal wanted a DNA test to be conducted by an international medical board to prove that the body was that of the slain leader and said he would move court in this regard.
Senator Agha Shahid Bugti, son-in-law of Akbar Bugti, said: "Unless the body was handed over to his heirs, we would not believe the government has really buried him."
Leaders of Islamist alliance Muthahida Majlis Amal and ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q said a dangerous game was being played in Balochistan as a result of which the future of the province seemed bleak.
Most vocal was former prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali who said that according to Baloch traditions, the funeral could not be carried without the presence of his real heirs -- a son, an uncle or a cousin, The Nation daily quoted him as saying.
Senior MMA leader Liaquat Baloch alleged that the Pakistani people felt President Pervez Musharraf had become a 'security risk' for the country and the Army by his actions.
Bugti was killed on August 26 in a military operation at his cave hide-out in Kohlu, southeast of the provincial capital of Quetta. Soldiers found Bugti's body under a boulder on Thursday and the funeral took place on Friday.
District Coordination Officer Abdus Kalam Lassi, the highest Pakistan official to be present at the burial, had displayed what he called the late leader's spectacles and wrist watch after the last rites. Lassi later claimed that he had seen the body and identified it as that of Akbar Bugti.
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