LAHORE, July 16: The Lahore High Court on Monday extended interim bail of four Mayo Hospital doctors linked to death of a child and directed them to approach the relevant court for bail within five days.

The court directed the investigation officer to make himself available at Gowalmandi Police Station at 6pm on Tuesday and told the accused doctors to join the investigation. The court adjourned the case till July 25.

Justice Ijazul Ahsan passed the order on a petition filed by Dr Matloob, Dr Usman, Dr Tajammul and Dr Adil Mansoor for bail and cancellation of the FIR registered against them.

As proceedings started, Punjab Additional Advocate General Faisal Zaman appeared before the court and submitted that the postmortem report could not be finalised. He submitted that chemical examiner report had not been received yet and it would take a week. He submitted that three of the four doctors who were granted bail by the court had not joined the investigation. He said that Dr Adil appeared before the investigation officer and produced a Gujranawala-to-Lahore travel ticket to prove that he was not in the hospital at the time of the incident.

He pointed out that the investigation officer had declared Dr Adil innocent, but it was not final and trial court would decide either to proceed against him or not. He said the remaining accused should be directed to join the investigation and their bail should be cancelled if they do not.

The law officer submitted that three of the four accused doctors who were not arrested approached the additional district and sessions court. The court granted bail to them and the hearing was fixed for Monday, but now it was adjourned till July 21.

The court was informed that Dr Salman neither joined the investigation nor got the bail and the USB provided by the accused was being examined.

Petitioners’ counsel Raja Zulqarnain said his clients tried to join the investigation, but the investigation officer was not available. The court heard the arguments and ordered completion of the investigation on merit.

Child Fahad, who was under treatment in Mayo Hospital, died after doctors allegedly pulled a drip tube out of his hand when police started a crackdown on striking doctors. Fahad’s father Afzal got a case registered against the striking doctors with Gowalmandi Police Station and nominated eight doctors, including Tajammul, Adil, Matloob, Hannan, Usman and Asad in the case. Earlier, the court granted interim bail to four doctors till July 16. — APP