Funeral prayers for Nusrat Bhutto held at Naudero

KARACHI: The funeral prayers for the late Begum Nusrat Bhutto, the wife of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and the mother of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, were held at Naudero on Monday. The body of the former first lady will be taken to Garhi Khuda Buksh for burial after the prayers.

Her body was flown by helicopter to Garhi Khuda Buksh in Naudero for burial after being presented the “Guard of Honour” in Sukkur on Monday.

She will be buried next to her husband in the family graveyard.

The funeral prayers were led by Mufti Abdur Raheem.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto died at a Dubai hospital on Sunday afternoon. She was 82.

She was suspected of suffering from cancer in 1982, and had also been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for the last several years. She left Pakistan in the same year for medical treatment.

President Asif Ali Zardari flew to Dubai from his official trip to Jordan to escort her body to Sukkur on Monday on a chartered plane. Begum Nusrat Bhutto’s daughter and only surviving child, Sanam Bhutto, and grandchildren, including Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Bakhtawar and Aseefa also flew to Dubai from London to accompany the body.

All banks and businesses were closed on Monday in respect for the departed soul. The PPP has suspended all political activities for the next 40 days to mourn her death.

She was elected to the National Assembly twice and served as cabinet member in her daughter Benazir Bhutto’s government in the 1990s, and rose to political prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she led protests and demonstrations against the military dictatorship that had overthrown her husband’s government.

Nusrat Bhutto withdrew from public life in the mid-1990s, particularly after the death of her son Mir Murtaza Bhutto in 1996.

Her elder son Murtaza was killed in a police shootout outside the family house in Karachi in 1996. Her other son Shahnawaz was found murdered in an apartment in France and her daughter Benazir was assassinated in December 2007.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2011