A MEMBER OF the Pakistani cabinet has been shot dead after his public calls for amendments to soften the country’s stringent and often controversial blasphemy laws.

Shahbaz Bhatti, who was a Catholic and the only Christian from the cabinet, came under massive fire outside the house owned by his parents in the capital, Islamabad.

PA reports that al-Qaeda have claimed responsibility for the attack, with pamphlets from both it and the Pakistani Taliban left at the scene, saying Bhatti had been targeted because of his membership of a committee reviewing the laws.

Pakistani laws currently demand the death penalty for any comment that insults the religion of Islam.

Bhatti was the federal minister for minority affairs, and was leaving the house to attend a cabinet meeting when his car was intercepted by another vehicle, The Hindu reported.

Though he had been offered two security vehicles as escorts in recent weeks, Bhatti had asked them to wait for him at his office while he visited his parents.

“He was probably shot using a Kalashnikov, but we are trying to ascertain exactly what happened,” a polic chief told the Hindustan Times.

Reports suggested Bhatti’s car had four or five bullet holes in its windscreen, and significant bloodstains in the back seat.

The BBC has published a video, meanwhile, of Bhatti – purporting to have been recorded four months ago – when the minister spoke of how he felt he was a likely target for such shootings.

Though he admitted to having received death threats over his position, he was to persist in “speaking for the oppressed and marginalised persecuted Christians and other minorities,” he said.

The video had been recovered with the specific intention of being distributed to broadcasters should Bhatti be killed, the BBC said.