Chaudhry's murder adds a new twist to the case which remains unsolved more than five years after the most popular politician of the country was assassinated at Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh through a huge blast and with bullets. A while back we saw a similar murder of Khalid Shahenshah in Clifton Karachi. Shahenshah was BB's [Benazir Bhutto's] main security guard.

It is astonishing that a government led by the party Benazir Bhutto headed made such limited efforts to discover what really happened, apart from making grand and expensive but purposeless moves like the so-called UN inquiry which led to nothing - and this nothing was, for whatever reasons, perhaps the goal. This lack of action has almost ensured that Benazir's murder may join the long list of mysteries that our political history is replete with.

The assassination of Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali may make it all the more likely that this will be the case. This incident is no doubt a personal tragedy for the victim's family and also for that of the female passerby who also died during the incident. But this death also goes beyond the personal and adds a new chapter to our history of many secrets seeped in blood. There are clearly persons who do not want the truth in this case to ever surface and wish to intimidate - even eliminate - those who are pursuing the case.

He received 17 bullets where only one or two would have sufficed. But the militants, calling themselves the Mujahideen-i-Islami, who killed Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali succeeded in conveying their message loud and clear - they can strike at will, wherever and whenever they wished, irrespective of consequences and 'collateral damage' - in this case a pedestrian - ... The FIA official's killing also shows the failure of the intelligence system. The militants are way ahead of the state, for they knew Chaudhry Zulfiqar's routine and took precise aim when the car had slowed down to make a U-turn. Can the state be as thorough in its ways? Do the plethora of intelligence agencies we have know who these 'Mujahideen-i-Islami' are?

The murder of Zulfiqar Ali decreases the possibility we will ever know the truth and this is extremely unfortunate. Other key persons in the case, including Benazir's security officer, have died before this latest incident. Indeed, the whole affair is beginning to, rather eerily, resemble the case involving the gunning down in Karachi in 1996 of Benazir's younger brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto. This, too, was followed by the killing of key witnesses and investigators ... No more curtains must be drawn to hide what really happened. Such acts only make matters worse, adding to uncertainty and the uncomfortable feeling that we live in a realm of darkness where much is kept hidden from the eyes of the citizens and the most drastic acts are carried out by unknown persons to prevent the truth from breaking through from behind this shield. Chaudhry Zulfiqar seems to have become the latest victim of these forces.