New Delhi: Days after former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination at Rawalpindi on 27 December 2007, her son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was named her successor as chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
He was 19 at the time, and a student at Oxford University. According to a BBC report, he was chosen as the titular head till the completion of his studies before taking over the reins of the PPP.
At the press conference where the announcement was made, Bilawal had said that his father Asif Ali Zardari would run the party till he is ready.
Fifteen years later, a somewhat older Bilawal, now 33, is at the epicentre of a major political churning underway in his country as head of the opposition PPP, which was founded by his grandfather and former PM late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The following are a series of photographs from various junctures of the young leader’s life.
The first four photographs were taken in September 1992 at the Bhutto residence in Karachi. Benazir Bhutto, then the Leader of Opposition, was to host a ‘SAARC Opposition leaders seminar’, which was attended by the late former Indian Prime Minister V.P. Singh and Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina, among others. The photos were taken a day before the event.
ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, an editor with India Today at the time, was good friends with Benazir Bhutto. A fan of Indian classical music, the former PM had requested him to bring along some CDs. While both of them were talking, ThePrint’s National Photo Editor Praveen Jain, who was then with The Pioneer, saw a young Bilawal and his sister Bakhtawar riding a horse and feeding goats in the garden.
The siblings happily obliged when asked to pose for the camera.
