The only Christian of the Pakistani Minorities Minister( Shahbaz Bhatt)i was shot dead on Wednesday morning by three gunmen who concealed his car in broad daylight in the capital, Islamabad. He was on his way to work through a residental district when his vehicle was showered with bullets. Mr Bhatii was 42, and a leader of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Before the incident occured he had just left his mother's home in the Surburb when about several gunmen border around his vehicle and puntured it with bullets, says witness. The gunmen pulled the minister's driver out of the car and started firing. by gunmenAccording the witness, the three gunmen who was wearing shawls excaped the scene in a white Suzuki car. Pamphlets by al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, a branch of the Taliban in Pakistan's most populous province, were found at the scene. Mr. Bhatti, like Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who was gunned down Jan. 4, had campaigned for the reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy law. The law, introduced in the 1970s, calls for the death penalty for those accused of speaking against the Prophet Muhammad. The identity of Mr. Bhatti’s killers is not known but suspicion immediately fell on members of extremist militant groups, but police are still investigating this murder.
The killing of Mr. Bhatti is likely to further expose the depth of religious conservatism among ordinary Pakistanis and in the educated middle class, who at the same time are fed up with the shortcomings of a feeble civilian government unable to deliver basic needs. After the attack, Mr. Bhatti’s government driver rushed him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
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