Salman Taseer

Taseer was born on 31 May 1944, in Shimla, British India, to a mixed-race family, being of Kashmiri descent on his father's side and of English descent on his mother's side.

His father was Muhammad Din Taseer (M. D. Taseer), who hailed from Ajnala near Amritsar, and was a professor at Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, Amritsar, having obtained his PhD in the United Kingdom.

Taseer's mother was Christobel George, a British woman who, upon her wedding, converted to Islam and took the name Bilqis.

Taseer's father died in 1950 at the age of 47, when Taseer was only six years old.

Taseer and his two sisters were brought up by their mother in relative poverty, in an environment with strong Christian influences.

He had little immersion in Pakistani culture, because his mother didn't stay in contact with her late husband's family.

Taseer attended St. Anthony's School, a school run by Christian missionaries in Lahore, where he was a classmate of Nawaz Sharif.

He then obtained a degree in Chartered Accountancy from London.

Taseer was married twice, and also had two confirmed extra-marital relationships.

With his first wife Yasmeen Sehgal, he had one son, Shaan, and two daughters, Sara and Sanam.

His second wife, Aamna Taseer, is chairperson of an investment management company.

They have two sons, Shahbaz and Shehryar and a daughter, Shehrbano.

Taseer had a brief extramarital relationship with the Indian journalist Tavleen Singh.

Taseer started his political career in his student era as a member of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in the late 1960s.

He was a part of the movement for Bhutto's freedom and opposed his arrest and death sentence.

A member of the Pakistan Peoples Party since the 1980s, he was elected to the Punjab Assembly from Lahore in the 1988 election, however lost in 1990, 1993 and then in 1997.

Taseer met Singh during a book promotion trip to India in March 1980.

Their son, Aatish (born 27 November 1980), is a writer and journalist.

According to Aatish, the relationship between his parents was an "affair (which) lasted little more than a week."

Aatish is a freelance journalist in the UK and has written a book – Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey through Islamic Lands – about his estranged relationship with his biological father.

He also wrote a political biography on Bhutto titled Bhutto: A political biography (1980).

Taseer was also known to be one of the trusted aides of Bhutto's daughter and political heir, Benazir Bhutto.

In the 1988 general elections, Taseer became a member of the Punjab Assembly from Lahore.

In the 1990, 1993 and 1997 general elections, he stood for election to be an MNA but lost.

In 1994, Taseer established a brokerage house backed by the Smith Barney and in 1996 he founded the Worldcall Group.

In 2000s, he ventured into media, launching Business Plus and Daily Times.

In 2007, he was appointed the interim Federal Minister for Industries, Production and Special Initiatives.

Taseer served as a minister in the caretaker cabinet of Prime Minister Muhammad Mian Soomro under Pervez Musharraf during the 2008 elections.

He was appointed as the governor of Punjab on 15 May 2008, by then-President Musharraf at the request of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani.

During his governorship, he emerged as an outspoken critic of Pakistan's blasphemy laws and consequently called for the pardon for a blasphemy accused Asia Bibi.

Born in Shimla in British India, Taseer studied at the St. Anthony's School and the Government College in Lahore before moving to London where he studied accountancy at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

On 15 May 2008, Taseer was designated for the office of Governor of Punjab by the PPP-led coalition government.

In December 2010, Taseer was alleged to have left the country for several days without handing over charge to the Punjab Assembly Speaker.

This meant that the province was without a constitutional head, and it also rendered the assembly speaker ineligible to preside over sessions.

Salman Taseer (Punjabi and ; May 31, 1944 – 4 January 2011) was a Pakistani businessman and politician, who served as the 26th Governor of Punjab from 2008 until his assassination in 2011.

On 4 January 2011, he was assassinated at the Kohsar Market in Islamabad by his bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, who disagreed with Taseer's opposition to Pakistan's blasphemy law.

The Guardian described Taseer's murder as "one of the most traumatic events in recent Pakistani history."

A nationwide three-day state of mourning was held in Pakistan, Taseer's funeral prayers were held at the Governors House in Lahore.

Taseer's son, Shahbaz, was kidnapped by the Pakistani Taliban in 2011, before being released in 2016, a few months after Taseer's murderer was hanged.

Taseer's other son, Shaan, is a leading critic of the country's blasphemy law.