Bhutto’s ‘threat’ in the Assembly that led to his hanging

On June 4, 1974, Bhutto was giving a speech in the National Assembly. During the speech, he said, “The noise and uproar of the opposition on the constitution is unjustified because all the members of the opposition have signed the constitution and this constitution is a unanimous constitution.”

Addressing the Speaker, Ahmed Raza Kasuri said, ‘Mr. Speaker, the distinguished speaker from Ratu Dero is working with false statements. The whole world knows that I did not sign the constitution. He did not vote for it. Then how can you say that the constitution has been signed by all and it is a consensual constitution?’

Bhutto got angry at Kasuri’s intervention and these remarks and pointed at Kasuri and shouted: I have had enough of this man. He is absolute poison. We will not tolerate him anymore.
(I’ve put up with this guy a lot. He’s poison incarnate. We’re not going to put up with him anymore.)

Why Bhutto became so agitated, we have to go back a little.

One of the early workers of the People’s Party

Ahmad Raza Khan Kasuri was born on September 2, 1938 in Kasur. During his student days in Government College Lahore and Punjab University, he played a prominent role in student politics and endured the hardships of imprisonment. In 1966, when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto resigned from Ayub Khan’s cabinet and came to Lahore by train, Ahmed Raza Kasuri was prominent among those who welcomed him.

On November 27, 1967, at the residence of Ahmad Raza Kasuri in Kasur, Bhutto announced that he was going to establish a political party very soon, which would be called the Pakistan People’s Party. Three days later on November 30, 1967, Bhutto officially announced the formation of this party in a political convention in Lahore.

In December 1970, Ahmad Raza Kasuri contested for the National Assembly from Kasur on the ticket of the Pakistan People’s Party and was elected as a member of the National Assembly by defeating Mian Ajmal Ahmad Sharqpuri and Mian Iftikharuddin’s son Mian Arif Iftikhar of Jamiat Ulema Pakistan. But some time after the elections, his differences with the chairman of the party Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started.

These differences started with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s announcement in which he said that he would not attend the session of the National Assembly convened in Dhaka on March 3, 1971, nor would he allow any other member of the assembly to attend. Rather, it was reported in some newspapers that the legs of those who do this will be broken.

Refusal to resign

Despite Bhutto’s announcement or threat, Ahmadreza Kasuri reached Dhaka to attend the meeting. Because of Bhutto’s ban, this meeting was never held, but this is where the distance between Bhutto and Kasuri began to grow.

When Ahmad Raza Kasuri returned from Dhaka to West Pakistan, Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto demanded the resignation of Ahmad Raza Kasuri from the seat of the National Assembly on the grounds that he disagreed with party policy. But Ahmad Raza Kasuri refused to resign from his seat. He claimed that he won this seat not because of Pakistan People’s Party but on the basis of his popularity.

Kasuri dismissed Bhutto

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto announced to hold a public meeting of Pakistan People’s Party in Kasur on May 2, 1971 to test the popularity of Ahmad Raza Kasuri. Before this meeting, Bhutto suspended Ahmed Raza Kasuri from party membership in light of the allegations of Meraj Khalid, Hanif Ramey and Yaqub Khan. Ahmed Raza Kasuri himself held a meeting after this announcement and announced that no one can expel him from the People’s Party.

The next day, Ahmed Raza Kasuri, addressing a press conference in Lahore, announced the dismissal of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from the chairmanship of the Pakistan People’s Party!

On June 6, 1971, the executive committee of the Pakistan People’s Party formally expelled Ahmad Raza Kasuri from the membership of the Pakistan People’s Party, and thus the gap between Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Ahmad Raza Kasuri deepened.

It should have happened that after being expelled from the PPP, Kasuri would have resigned from the membership of the National Assembly and run for re-election from another party or as an independent, but there are no such democratic values ​​in Pakistan. So in 1972, when the sessions of the National Assembly started, Ahmed Raza Kasuri announced joining the Independence Movement.

When the 1973 Constitution came before the House for approval, Ahmad Raza Kasuri was among the three people who did not sign the Constitution. Ahmad Raza Kasuri’s insulting and provocative speeches against Bhutto and Pakistan People’s Party continued in the assembly.

About five months after Bhutto’s speech in the National Assembly, on November 11, 1974, the event took place that changed the course of Pakistan’s political history.

The details of the incident were that on that night Ahmad Raza Kasuri, along with his father Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri, his mother (Sahibzadi Maimunah Bano Begum) and aunt (Begum Agha Mehdi Khan) returned home on the invitation of a friend Syed Bashir Shah. were returning

Ahmed Raza Kasuri was driving the car. When he reached the square at the junction of Shadman and Shah Jamal, suddenly unknown persons started firing at his car. As a result of this firing, Ahmad Raza Kasuri remained safe, but his father Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Kasuri was seriously injured.

Ahmad Raza Kasuri immediately reached the United Christian Hospital with his father, but Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Kasuri succumbed to his injuries there.

Case in office

Ahmed Raza Kasuri filed an FIR of the murder on the same night in which he made Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto the prime suspect of the murder. Bhutto immediately set up a tribunal of inquiry headed by Lahore High Court judge Justice Shafiur Rahman to investigate the murder. The tribunal submitted its report to the government on 26 February 1975 suggesting some guidelines for the investigation of the case.

The government did not make that report public. In October 1975, the case was docketed for non-detection.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has shed light on this murder case in several places in his book Rumor and Reality based on his memoirs on small mats a few months before the execution.

According to him, neither Ahmed Raza Kasuri nor any member of his family won national, provincial and local body elections before 1970. Ahmad Raza Kasuri won in 1970 simply because he was given a ticket by the PPP.

According to Bhutto, when the People’s Party assumed power in December 1971, it was revealed that Ahmad Raza Kasuri was a paid employee of the secret agencies who cooperated with General Yahya’s military government to get benefits. Later he agreed to become the tool of General Zia-ul-Haq.

Bhutto has written in his same book that Muhammad Ahmad Kasuri’s blood was not even dry that his son was shouting, Bhutto went to the opponents and advised them how to take advantage of his father’s death.

Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi rushed to the hospital. There was a conspiracy among the hospital staff to use this tragic incident as a means to reach the halls of power. So Bhutto was accused of conspiracy to murder. He had failed to get a ministry from Bhutto and this was the reason for the enmity.

According to Bhutto, he was looking for an opportunity to humiliate the Prime Minister. According to the same sources, he suddenly got this opportunity in the form of his father’s death.

Kasuri went as emotional and dramatic as possible and all the indecent allegations she made were highly dramatic. Kasuri and his associate Zahoor Elahi decided to implicate the Prime Minister in the case by saying that Kasuri had enmity only with him. Thus they fueled a scandal and demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister.

Full confidence in the Tribunal

Bhutto set up a tribunal to investigate the death of Muhammad Ahmad Kasuri. Justice Shafiur Rehman, a close friend of Maulvi Mushtaq, was chosen to head it. Since it was known to everyone that Justice Shafiur Rahman did not like the Prime Minister, Kasuri had full confidence in the tribunal and appeared before him.

The tribunal conducted a thorough investigation into the incident. Kasuri admitted in his affidavit before the tribunal that the attack was not necessarily a result of his enmity with the prime minister. He mentioned four types of people who had bad intentions towards him.

He mentioned the Qadianis on whom he attacked fiercely when the Qadiani issue was at its peak. He mentioned his opponents in Kasur with whom he had a long-standing enmity.

He mentioned some opposition members and PPP workers with whom he had very strained relations. At the end of the tribunal’s report, Kasuri expressed full confidence in the conclusions drawn by the tribunal.

As soon as the tribunal’s report was completed, Kasuri began efforts to meet the prime minister. Bhutto refused to meet him. Kasuri wrote bloody letters to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister finally agreed to take Kasuri back into the party ranks.

The purpose of Ahmad Raza Kasuri’s anxiety to return to the People’s Party was clear. He wanted to become MNA again by taking the support of PPP in the coming general elections. He knew that Kasur is the stronghold of PPP and he cannot succeed in the elections without the help of PPP. Kasuri arranged to return to the PPP with a bang.

On April 6, 1976, he met Begum Nusrat Bhutto and joined the PPP again after four years. He requested Begum Nusrat Bhutto to grace her return to the party with her presence.

The next day, he announced his decision to rejoin the People’s Party while addressing a meeting of People’s Party workers at his Model Town Lahore residence.

Sacrifice son to Bhutto

In this reception, he praised the Prime Minister immensely. His mother (Begum Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Khan Kasuri) publicly announced that she would sacrifice all her sons for the Prime Minister because without Prime Minister Bhutto Pakistan would not survive.

Ahmad Raza Kasuri went so far in his desire to secure the party’s ticket in the upcoming elections that in January 1977 he praised the Prime Minister’s agricultural reforms in the National Assembly in these words.

I am addressing the National Assembly on such a historic occasion when we are introducing revolutionary agricultural reforms in Pakistan. Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss in my duty if I did not congratulate Prime Minister Bhutto and his government for implementing revolutionary reforms in Pakistan.

Kasuri realized that people would be surprised by what he said so he added:

‘I have a reputation as an upright and upright man. I was a strong critic of this government on this side of the House, so no one can say that it is flattery when I praise this government. Many Prime Ministers came to this country, but the current Prime Minister who is leading the country now, his name will be written in golden letters in history.

Only Kasuri can tell whether his words were sincere or it was a ploy to get the PPP ticket in the upcoming elections. However, the Pakistan People’s Party did not give ticket to Ahmed Raza Kasuri for the March 1977 elections. It was his misfortune that he could not get anything out of it. The party’s Parliamentary Board termed him a lunatic and said that even his friends did not take him seriously.

Bhutto has written that if he had felt guilty about the murder of Kasuri’s father, he would have silenced him by giving him the ticket he was ‘begging for’. They didn’t do it because they didn’t feel guilty.

On July 5, 1977, General Zia-ul-Haq overthrew the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and seized power. A few days after this incident, Ahmed Raza Kasuri came to Hyderabad. There he spoke to journalists in an invitation given by Rasool Bux Talpur and said:

“An angry and bitter element of the People’s Party will not join any party in the national alliance, but this group of the left wing of the People’s Party will mobilize the Awami Jamhoori Party in Punjab.”

Sand of Punjab

Ahmed Raza Kasuri was asked why he rejoined the People’s Party, he replied that after Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and Sadiq Hussain Qureshi, Begum Nusrat Bhutto came to his house and reassured my mother by placing her hand on the Holy Quran. It was said that Bhutto had no hand in the murder of her husband. After this assurance, he forced my mother to rejoin the PPP. Therefore, according to the sand of Punjab, we were not denied and it has been the sand of our province that when someone’s sister, daughter, wife or mother comes to someone’s house, all the throats are turned.

But a few weeks later, with the blessing of the military government, Ahmad Raza Kasuri again saw Bhutto as his father’s murderer, and the widow of Muhammad Ahmad Kasuri, who had announced that she would sacrifice all her sons to Prime Minister Bhutto, General Zia. filed an application requesting that the case against the former prime minister be reopened.

Ahmed Raza Kasuri expressed disbelief on the report of Justice Shafiur Rehman Tribunal. During this time, the so-called drama of elections was announced within 90 days, then he announced to contest against Bhutto from Constituency No. 3 of Lahore.

He also expressed that General Zia had promised him that if he filed a petition against Bhutto, he would be made successful from this constituency as compensation. Ahmad Raza Kasuri expressed pride in his relationship with General Zia and said that General Zia has also promised to make him a minister after the elections.

What happened next is a dark chapter in the history of Pakistan. Bhutto’s speech in the National Assembly on June 4, 1977 became the biggest justification for implicating him in the murder of Nawab Muhammad Ahmad Kasuri and as a result of the decisions of the High Court and the Supreme Court, Bhutto was hanged for this murder. was given. Thus, the country lost its intelligent but controversial politician forever.

Ahmed Raza Kasuri stayed away from the field of politics for a long time after that. However, in the general elections of 1990, 1993 and 1997, he contested as an independent candidate but was badly defeated each time.

Before the 2002 elections, he managed to join Tehreek-e-Insaaf. In 2002, he contested for the National Assembly from two constituencies, Kasur and Islamabad, but this time also his security was forfeited from both the constituencies.

Today, Kasuri is associated with the All Pakistan Muslim League founded by General Musharraf.