PESHAWAR: Peshawar Police arrested nine more suspects for faking the illness and subsequent hospitalisation of schoolchildren in Mashokhel village and setting a hospital ablaze to conspire against the ongoing countrywide polio campaign.
A day earlier, police registered First Information Report (FIR) against 12 individuals who were behind the propaganda against the polio campaign in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
The spokesman of polio eradication in Pakistan, Babar Atta, said on Tuesday in a tweet that police have lodged an “FIR against 12 individuals who were behind the Peshawar Polio Drama.”
He added that: “Raids [are] being conducted to get all of them arrested. I am in touch with Peshawar Police Chief & following up on all updates. InshaAllah not a single one will be spared.”
The alleged conspiracy to defame the anti-polio campaign in Peshawar was exposed late night on Monday when a video of a man surfaced on social media.
EXPOSED :: Watch how young innocent kids were made to lay down in hospital beds and pretend they’re suffering due to Polio vaccination, to give a wrong message to masses regarding the #Polio campaign; SHAME on such people who’re playing with the future of Pakistan ! #Peshawar pic.twitter.com/1f6ZWrrOK7
— PTI KP (Official) (@PTIKPOfficial) April 22, 2019
In the video, a man could be seen employing children to prove that polio vaccines were defected. He administers children polio drops, following which the children are asked to pretend to have fainted.
He can be heard asking the children to lie down on the stretcher, following which all the children, standing on their feet till moments ago, start falling on the hospital bed.
When one of the children raises his head, he is again told by the man in the video to keep his head down and pretend. The children otherwise seem to be totally fine in the video.
Peshawar was gripped in a panic Monday morning as rumours spread like a wildfire that the anti-polio vaccine had caused children to fall ill and faint in several areas of the city.
It was reported that at least 700 schoolchildren fell sick after polio vaccination in Peshawar causing an attack on a hospital in the city by the angry mob.