KARACHI: A doctor was shot at and wounded allegedly by a policeman on the premises of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in the early hours of Thursday, police said.

They added that Dr Fahad Hussain was shot at and wounded by constable Kamran, posted at the CTD Civil Lines, inside the NICVD emergency section. The suspect was later arrested. The police said the initial probe revealed that the policeman attacked the doctor over the previous night’s refusal by another doctor to give him sleeping pills and advising him against taking the drug.

Senior CTD official Raja Umar Khattab said the constable, Kamran, had been suffering from a chest problem and fever for the last 15 to 20 days. He got himself tested at a private hospital and was diagnosed with typhoid. He visited the NICVD on Tuesday night where a security guard stopped him and asked him to wear a face mask before entering the hospital. After an argument with the guard, he got a mask and entered the emergency section where he reportedly asked the doctor for sleeping pills saying he had not slept for three days.

Mr Khattab claimed that the doctor did not give him the medicine. The constable went back home and returned to the hospital on Wednesday night riding a motorcycle. He reportedly asked about the same doctor as he was not available there. He opened fire on another doctor, Fahad, and escaped.

The CTD official said that after the incident, the suspect visited the CTD Civil Lines, where he was behaving strangely and he told his colleagues that he had shot a doctor.

Mr Khattab said he asked the police personnel there to detain him. Later the CTD police handed him over to the Saddar police for investigation. Quoting the family and his colleagues, the CTD official said that lately the detained policeman had become “emotionally disturbed”.

The doctor, who suffered two bullet wounds in his legs, was stated to be out of danger.

The police registered an FIR (238/2020) against the held policeman under Section 324 (attempt to commit qatl-I-amd) of the Pakistan Penal Code on a complaint of the wounded doctor.

In his statement before the police, the complainant said that he was performing his duty at the emergency section when a man wearing shalwar kameez appeared there and asked him about the doctor who was on duty there the previous day. As the complainant told him that he did not know about it, the suspect said: “You (doctors) are dishonest and I won’t spare you.” The doctor added that he “shot me in both my legs and fled.”

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2020