Murder case against doctors: Counsel told to submit proof of FIR’s quashing

ADSJ seeks copy of LHC order to police at hearing on December 14.

LAHORE:

Additional District and Sessions Judge Nisar Ahmed has directed the lawyer for doctors accused in a murder case to produce a copy of a Lahore High Court order purportedly directing the police to quash the murder FIR on December 14.

At the previous hearing, the doctors had sought to withdraw their bail applications on the grounds that the FIR had been quashed following negotiations between the Punjab government and the Young Doctors Association to end the doctors’ strike.

But Muhammad Afzal, the complainant in the case, told the judge on Monday that he wished to continue pursuing the case and had not withdrawn his complaint.

The judge asked the counsel for the doctors to show him the LHC order quashing the FIR. Afzal had stated in his complaint that members of the YDA at Mayo Hospital had removed drips from his 18-month-old son Fahad, who was being treated at the emergency ward. 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 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.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2012.