The Lahore High Court on Monday extended the interim bail granted to four doctors of Mayo Hospital, who were allegedly involved in a child death case and directed them to approach the court for bail within five days.
The court also directed the investigation officer to be available at the Gawalmandi Police Station at 6 pm on Wednesday and the accused doctors were directed to join the investigation.
The court adjourned the case until July 25.
Justice Ijazul Ahsan passed the order on a petition filed by Dr Matloob, Dr Usman, Dr Tajammul and Dr Adil Mansoor for bail and seeking directions to quash the FIR registered against them.
As proceedings started, Punjab Additional Advocate General (AAG) Faisal Zaman appeared before the court and submitted that the postmortem report could not be finalised.
He submitted that chemical examiner report had not been received yet and it would take a week, adding that three out of four doctors who were granted bail by the court had not joined the investigation.
The AAG submitted that Dr Adil appeared before the investigation officer and had produced a travel ticket from Gujranawala to Lahore at the time of the incident.
He pointed out that the investigation officer had declared Dr Adil innocent, however, it was not final and trial court would decide either to proceed further against him or not.
He submitted the remaining accused be directed to join the investigation and their bail be cancelled if they failed to do so.
The AAG also submitted that three out of four accused doctors who were not arrested approached additional district and session court.
He submitted that the court granted bail to them and the matter was fixed for today but now it was adjourned till July 21.
The court was told that Dr Salman had neither joined investigation nor got bail.
The court was also informed that the USB provided by the accused doctors was in process of examination.
However, the petitioners’ counsel Raja Zulqarnain claimed that the petitioners had made repeated efforts to join the investigation but the investigation officer was not available.
The court after hearing the arguments directed that the investigation be completed on merit and ordered the four accused doctors approach the court for bail within five days.
A child, Fahad, who was under treatment in Mayo hospital died as the medics, allegedly, did not attend him after a police crackdown on doctors.
Afaz, the child’s father, had registered a case against ‘killer’ doctors at Gawalmandi Police Station, nominating eight doctors including Tajammul, Adil, Matloob, Hannan, Usman, Asad and others.
Earlier, the court granted interim bail to the four accused doctors till July 16.
