The footage aired on Monday by Britain’s Channel 4 and subsequently beamed by Pakistani channels, showed that Bhutto, who stood at the sun-roof of her bulletproof vehicle, had fallen into the car after shots were fired and before a suicide bomber detonated his explosives after the Rawalpindi rally on December 27.

This was contrary to the government’s account that was based on a medical report prepared by doctors at the hospital where Bhutto had died — that the force of the blast had thrown Bhutto against a metal lever on the car’s sun-roof, causing a fatal skull fracture.

However, Athar Minallah, a top lawyer and a member of the board of management of Rawalpindi General Hospital where Bhutto was taken after the attack, said the doctors had a one line finding on the cause of the death.
 They said: “Open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest.”

Minallah said that the initial report does not say what caused her death but said that there was an “open head injury” and it could have been caused by “a bullet, shrapnel or a lever of the car”.

The new video which came a day after photos emerged of an armed youth shooting Bhutto, will strengthen suspicion that the government was trying to cover up the extent of the lapses in Bhutto’s security.

Minallah said doctors, who treated Bhutto, had told him that they wanted to conduct the autopsy but the Rawalpindi Police chief had not agreed to this.

Minallah’s statement runs contrary to the contention of Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema, who had said on Friday that the autopsy was not done at the request of Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari.

Cheema said the doctors had performed only an “external post-mortem” using X-rays, while Minallah argued that avoiding the mandatory autopsy on the body of Bhutto missed the government’s stand, saying their leader had died after the fire was opened, that Bhutto’s hair and scarf appeared to rise before she did. This was followed by the blast.

A ballistics expert told Channel 4 that the new video appears to show the exact moment when Bhutto was struck by a bullet.