KARACHI, June 17: Owing to the decision of transferring reports of assault cases from Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) to Civil Hospital Karachi, a large number of victims are suffering untold miseries for the last few months.

Inquiries revealed that almost all assault and violence related cases were earlier X-rayed and reported at JPMC. The process was smooth and facilitating for the aggrieved person, as the whole procedure was conducted at one place. Police could start investigation after registering an FIR of the incident at the same hospital.

However, on account of reasons known only to the authorities concerned, the process was made cumbersome and complicated. The victims are now X-rayed at JPMC while the reporting process was shifted to CHK, which is already handling large number of similar cases.

Unable to cope with the mounting load of such cases, the performance of radiologist of CHK in finalization of reporting cases is also affected. With this burden, the radiologist takes almost two or three weeks to finalize the report, which is desperately needed by the assault victims and their relatives demanding justice against the violence.

Moreover, the delay in finalization of reports also allows criminals to ensure bargaining with the relatives of the victims and thus influencing them either through persuasion or threatening strategy with the objective to alter course of justice.

There exists a number of precedence, when some important X-ray reports were misplaced, while shifting them to CHK from JPMC. Such incidents also contributed changing the whole complexion of the reports.

The shifting of reporting procedure from JPMC to CHK has also contributed undermining reputation of radiologists of the JPMC, who are competent enough to handle such cases.

Some of the victims of this inordinate delay in finalization of reporting cases have demanded that the authorities concerned should annul this decision and allow radiologists of JPMC to continue their work. —PPI