LAHORE: Five government teaching hospitals were found involved in preparing and generating manual medico-legal certificates (MLCs) and postmortem reports in allegedly blatant violation of the order of the Lahore High Court.

It emerged when some official reports pointed out 4,244 MLCs and 283 postmortem reports generated by the government hospitals during the past six to seven months, prompting the health secretariat to initiate departmental proceedings against the heads of these institutions.

The hospitals were initially held guilty of violating the directions of the Lahore High Court, Medico Legal Surgeon Punjab and the standard guidelines issued by the Punjab health department.

In an official letter addressed to Nishtar Hospital, Multan, medical superintendent, the health secretariat gave reference to the LHC division bench which had taken strict notice of the violations.In a separate letter addressed to the MS of the Services Hospital, Lahore, the authorities have pointed out 680 MLCs issued during the last six months.

According to other respective official letters, Allama Iqbal Teaching Hospital, DG Khan, generated 768 manual MLCs, and 10 postmortem reports, government teaching hospital, Sargodha, 735 MLCs and 48 postmortem reports and Allama Iqbal Memorial Teaching Hospital, Sialkot, issued 1,245 MLCs and 43 postmortem reports during the last six-month period.

An official privy to the information said that the matter first time came to the notice of the higher authorities when the Services Hospital issued a manual MLC in a rape case and the same report was presented to the Lahore High Court some weeks back.

He said the LHC had taken strict notice of the issue and sought records from the health department as well as the hospital’s management.

The official said the department got the matter probed at a high level and punished three lady gynaecologists.

Later, he said, the health department expanded the scope of investigation from the Services Hospital to all the public sector teaching hospitals across Punjab, seeking reports from each institution regarding the MLCs and postmortem reports.

As the inquiry concluded, the report came up with official figures that the above-mentioned five teaching hospitals were allegedly found involved in generating the manual MLCs and postmortem reports.

The official said the investigations were underway to find out whether the manual reports were generated to favour the interested parties or it was ‘just negligence.’

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2026