ISLAMABAD, April 16: The Supreme Court expressed surprise on Monday over PPP’s reluctance to register a second FIR in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case.

“It is unfortunate that the party of Benazir Bhutto is in power but they are opposing the registration of the second FIR for further investigation into the BB murder case,” a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry said.

The court also observed that Interior Minister Rehman Malik should have dissociated himself from the official post till the investigation was completed because he was one of the accused in the case.

The bench was hearing an appeal filed by Mohammad Aslam Chaudhry who had worked for Ms Bhutto as protocol officer for 21 years and was one of the witnesses injured in the gun-and-bomb attack outside Liaquat Bagh on Dec 27, 2007.

The petitioner had challenged rejection by the Lahore High Court of his plea for registration of the FIR.

Mr Aslam Chaudhry had requested the court to initiate criminal proceedings against former president Pervez Musharraf and others for allegedly hatching and executing a plan to assassinate Ms Bhutto and named as respondents Punjab’s former chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, former law minister Babar Awan, the then acting interior minister Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz, ex-director general of Intelligence Bureau Syed Ijaz Hussain Shah, former interior secretary Syed Kamal Shah and senior police officers of Rawalpindi.

The court wondered why the government had failed to publish the United Nations (UN) investigation report on the case despite having spent millions of dollars.

“It is too sad that the government is making efforts that a fresh FIR should not be registered against Kamal Shah, Javed Cheema and others,” the chief justice said when informed that Mr Malik and Mr Elahi were against it. Advocate Anwer Mansoor Khan, representing the interior minister, said the applicant wanted to disrupt the murder case and had filed the application after three years with mala fide intentions.

He said the applicant had not filed some important pages of the UN report and that he wanted to submit those pages along with other documents.

The lawyer sought time to submit a reply and said the applicant was not an aggrieved person in the case.

Justice Khilji Arif Hussain said the applicant was a worker of the party and an eyewitness of the incident and, therefore, he was an aggrieved person.

The proceedings were adjourned for April 24.