Bhutto killing: Pak govt offers Rs one crore for info

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities on Tuesday issued a front-page advertisement in newspapers offering a reward of Rs one crore for information about the killers of former premier Benazir Bhutto even as the government said its probe of her assassination is "progressing steadily". "Nothing will be hidden and all the facts will be made public," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a weekly briefing. The investigation is "progressing steadily" and senior investigators are collecting all the evidence in a scientific manner, he said. The government's contention that Bhutto died of a skull fracture during the attack has been dismissed as "absolute nonsense" by her Pakistan People's Party, which said she was shot in the head. The official account created uproar in Pakistan and abroad. Asked about his earlier statements that Bhutto died after her head was hit on a metal lever in her car's sun-roof, Cheema said those were based on "the initial facts available at that time". The advertisement issued by the home department of Punjab province seeking information about the killers included a photo of the suspected assailants that was first aired by Dawn News channel two days after Bhutto's murder in Rawalpindi on December 27. It shows the shooter -- a clean-shaven youth wearing a white shirt, dark waistcoat and dark glasses -- and the suspected suicide bomber, a man with a white cloth wrapped around his face. The advertisement had another photo of the severed head of the suspected bomber.