FIR against doctors: SHO directed to produce complainant

Judge seeks confirmation that murder FIR has been quashed.

LAHORE:

Additional District and Sessions Judge Nisar Ahmed has directed the Yaki Gate station house officer (SHO) to produce the complainant in a murder case against some doctors to explain the status of the FIR.

At the previous hearing on Friday, the accused doctors had sought to withdraw their bail applications in the case, as the FIR against them had been quashed following negotiations between organisations representing doctors and the Punjab government.

The judge wanted the complainant, Muhammad Afzal, to confirm that the case had been quashed, but he did not turn up for the hearing. He did not turn up for the hearing on Saturday either. The judge then directed the Yakki Gate SHO to arrest the complainant and produce him in court on December 3.

Afzal had stated in his complaint that members of the Young Doctors Association at Mayo Hospital had removed drips from his son Fahad, who was being treated at the emergency ward amidst a doctors’ strike.

He said that rather than tend to his 18-month-old son, who was in urgent need of medical care, the doctors sought to enforce the YDA strike.

The FIR was registered at Gawalmandi police station under various sections of the Pakistan Penal Code including murder.

The doctors had said in their bail applications that they were not even in the emergency ward at the time of Fahad’s death and the case against them was politically motivated, as the Punjab government had been seeking at the time to turn public opinion against the YDA.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2012.