LAHORE: Two doctors went missing under mysterious circumstances from the King Edward Medical College’s hostel five days ago, their families told police here on Sunday.

Dr Hafiz Muhammad Adnan of Rahim Yar Khan and Dr Muhammad Javed of Muzaffargarh were doing house job at paeds ward’s unit-1 of the Mayo Hospital and were living in the KEMC hostel.

Both doctors left their ward on March 14 after completing the duty, but they did not turn up to the hospital till filing of this report.

The hospital and ward administration contacted their families on Friday and inquired about their absence from the duty. The families of both doctors also didn’t have any information about them.

Dr Adnan’s elder brother Dr Jam Rizwan said the hospital administration contacted him and asked about his brother’s absence from the duty.

He said on Monday last he contacted Adnan who told him that he could not contact them till next 24 hours because of his busy duty schedule. “I contacted Adnan on Friday but his mobile phone was powered off. I thought that Adnan might be sleeping after completing long duty hours.”

Dr Rizwan said he was shocked when the administration called him late on Friday and told him that Adnan had been absent from duty since March 15.

He said he approached the administration on Saturday and also found his brother’s hostel room locked while he lodged a missing report of his brother with the Gawalmandi police station on Sunday.

Police registered a kidnapping case against unidentified persons on the complaint of victim’s brother.

Muhammad Khursheed, the elder brother of Dr Javed, also approached the police and lodged a missing report of his brother.

He told media that his father received a call from the KEMU administration on Friday regarding the absence of his son from the duty. Mr Khursheed said both the missing men worked as doctors and the government should act fast to recover them.

One of their colleagues, seeking anonymity, told Dawn that he had not found any extreme religious tendency in Dr Adnan.

KEMU Vice-Chancellor Dr Asad Aslam told media that they had contacted the families of both doctors after finding them absent from the duty.

He said he had also directed the Paed ward’s head to collect information about both doctors and submit his report.

The VC said the matter was also reported to the police on Saturday. “We will also try to have the safe recovery of both doctors”, he said.

A senior police officer, on the condition of anonymity, said the law enforcement agencies took both doctors into custody in connection with their link with a banned religious outfit.

A spokesman for the Counter Terrorism Department expressed his ignorance about the arrest of doctors.

He said some news channels were airing baseless reports and that the CTD had nothing to do with the two missing doctors.

Wife’s murder: A man confessed on Sunday to have killed his newlywed wife over ‘forced marriage’.

Hira, 21, of Samanabad had married her cousin Umar Tanveer last week and was found dead on her bed after three days of marriage.

Police on the same day arrested Tanveer after registration of a murder case against him on the complaint of victim’s father Yaqoob.

Earlier, the suspect denied the charges and told media persons that his wife was sleeping and wearing Duptta and might have been strangled to death accidentally.

The postmortem report revealed that the girl was not strangled. The police later sent the samples to the Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) and its report revealed that the girl was suffocated to death.

Iqbal Town SP Shaista Nadeem said the suspect confessed to his crime of suffocating his wife to death.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2017