The Police on Sunday arrested a suspected quack after a minor girl died allegedly after receiving an injection at his clinic in Karachi’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal area on Saturday night.
Superintendent of Police (SP) Shahnawaz told a private news channel that the held suspect and the family told the police that the girl was being treated for pneumonia at the clinic.
The girl’s family had taken her to the clinic late Saturday night, where the suspect allegedly administered an injection to her, after which her condition deteriorated, police said.
On the suspect’s advice, the family took the girl to the nearby Al-Mustafa Medical Centre, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The police said a post-mortem examination of the girl had been conducted, and that her exact cause of death would be determined after the reports arrived.
“The quack had fled his clinic,” Shahnawaz said, adding that he was arrested on Sunday after raids were conducted all night to locate his whereabouts.
A case “will be registered soon” against the held suspect, he added.
The SP said that as per the family’s statement, the girl’s condition was not “serious” when she was brought to the private clinic.
To a question, the officer said that the held suspect “does not appear to be a properly qualified MBBS doctor” and is a “quack type”.
The family of the deceased hails from Rahim Yar Khan. Her father was stated to be a rickshaw driver.
According to the girl’s father, the girl was taken to the clinic to seek treatment for cough, flu and congestion.
The suspect, after questioning the father regarding the girl’s symptoms, wrote down a few medicines on his prescription pad and asked him to procure them from a nearby medical store.
“He injected my daughter and her condition deteriorated within moments. The (suspect) doctor had not even withdrawn the syringe from her arm and she began foaming at the mouth,” the girl’s father said, narrating the sequence of events to the media.
He said that the suspect attempted to resuscitate her but then “when the girl seemed to have already passed away” told him to take her to another hospital.
“We took her to a hospital that was located five minutes away. They took a look at her and told us she had already expired.”
The girl’s body was shifted to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) to fulfil legal formalities.
Police surgeon Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi said that Medico-Legal Officer (MLO) Dr Zakia Khurshid conducted her autopsy and reserved her cause of death for histopathological and chemical examiner’s report.
Dr Abbasi said that as per the police’s report, the girl died at around 10pm on Saturday.
Quoting investigation officer of the case Akram Qureshi, the police surgeon revealed that the police were informed about the incident at around 1:30am on Sunday.
But the police brought her body at the JPMC for an autopsy at around 2pm, after a considerable delay, he said. He admitted that three major hospitals of the city that deal with medico-legal cases were facing an acute shortage of female MLOs.
Meanwhile, there were reports of the death of a toddler allegedly due to administration of a wrong injection in the city. According to reports, a boy named Hunain also passed away in Malir allegedly due to a lethal injection.
