Peshawar police on Tuesday took notice after a woman turned up at a hospital with a nail hammered into her head, allegedly on the directions of a faith healer, in order to give birth to a baby boy.

Peshawar police chief Abbas Ahsan took notice after pictures of the woman went viral on social media and directed SP City Ateeq Shah to trace the victim and the "fake aamil".

According to a tweet from the Twitter handle of the Peshawar CCPO, SSP Shah reached Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), where the women was treated, and met with the hospital administration to go through the victim's entry data.

"The process of identifying the victim from the CCTV footage as well as from the computer entry data is underway."

Earlier today, CCPO Ahsan said that a special team had been constituted to "bring to justice the fake peer (faith healer) who played with the life of an innocent woman and put a nail in her head with [the] false promise of a male child."

"The team will also investigate why [the] incident was not reported to [the] police by the treating doctor," he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Haider Suleman, the resident neurosurgeon at LRH, said that the victim was bleeding when she was brought in and was given first aid before being taken to the operation theatre.

"She said that a woman in her locality did the same [hammered a nail] and gave birth to a boy even though the ultrasound had shown her unborn child to be a girl," the doctor said.

However, the doctor was not clear on whether a peer had hammered the nail into her skull or if she did it to herself.

Dr Suleman said that the nail had penetrated deep within the victim's skull. "The family said that she was at home and became unconscious," he said, noting that attempts were also made to remove the nail from the patient's head at her home.

"They tried to remove it at home, but could not," he said, adding that doctors successfully removed it after operating on the patient.

Hospital staff told Dawn.com that according to their investigation, the victim was a mother to three daughters. Her husband had allegedly threatened to leave her if she gave birth to a fourth girl.

"She is three months pregnant and because of her husband's fear she went to the faith healer who gave her taweez, things to recite and the nail.

"The victim then returned home and hammered the nail in her head. She was discovered by family members after she screamed in pain and was shifted to the hospital," staff said.

Staff also quoted the victim as saying that she would get an ultrasound done after sometime to learn the gender of her child.