Police given one more week to file charge sheet in Nashwa death case

A judicial magistrate on Saturday gave seven more days to police to file a charge sheet in the Nashwa death case after the investigation officer (IO) requested more time to complete the investigation.

Nine-month-old Nashwa died on April 22 nearly two weeks after she was allegedly given wrong treatment at the Darul Sehat Hospital.

According to her father Qaiser Ali, the infant was given an excessive injection which paralysed her.

A total of 13 persons, including the private hospital’s chairman Amir Chishti, vice chairman Syed Ali Farhan, executive director Dr Shehzad Alam, HR director Irfan Aslam, nursing department head Dr Rizwan Azmi, RMOs Syed Shabbar Hussain Zaidi, Dr Aitya Ahmed and Dr Sharjeel Hussan, nursing incharge Atif Javed, nurses Sobia Irshad and Agha Moiz, administration officer Ahmer Shahzad and security incharge Waleed-ur-Rehman, have been nominated in the case.

Of these, five, including Javed, Irshad, Moiz, Shahzad and Rehman, are in jail on judicial remand while Chishti and Farhan have obtained interim bail from the Sindh High Court.

The hospital’s chairman and vice-chairman had escaped from the city court after their bail pleas were rejected by a sessions judge. Dr Ahmed and Dr Hassan had also done the same previously.

The FIR of the incident is registered under sections 302 (premeditated murder), 322 (manslaughter) 337 (shajjah) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code 1860 at the Sharah-e-Faisal police station. Police have named around 25 witnesses in the interim charge sheet.

The District East judicial magistrate directed the IO to file the final charge sheet with the court by the next hearing on May 18.

Chronology

According to Prof Dr Naveed Rashid, principal, College of Dentistry, Liaquat College of Medicine & Dentistry, Nashwa and her twin sisters were admitted to the paediatric ward of the DSH on April 6 through emergency, with the complaint of motions and vomiting.

“In the morning of April 7 Nashwa crashed after the injection was wrongly administered to her and so she was immediately transferred to the ICU and put on a ventilator. Her father was given the option to shift her to the Aga Khan University Hospital [AKUH] or the Liaquat National Hospital [LNH], but he preferred to stay at the DSH.”

He said Nashwa’s twin was discharged in the meantime, adding that on April 8 her father asked for a summary to consult the AKUH’s paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) consultants, who were contacted and briefed about the case.

“On April 9 the PICU doctor contacted the father, as the space was available, but Mr Qaiser did not shift the baby as he was satisfied with the treatment at the DSH.” He said that on April 10 Nashwa was extubated — or weaned off the ventilator — and the baby was maintaining saturation with oxygen, while a CT scan of her brain was conducted.

He added the father took a neurological opinion from an LNH paediatric neurologist on April 11. “The baby was maintaining saturation on low oxygen and nasogastric feeding was started on April 12. The baby was shifted to the LNH on April 15.”

On May 2, hearing a petition seeking action against unlicensed health facilities in the province, the Sindh High Court’s division bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar was informed by a health department official that the Sindh Health Care Commission had sealed the DSH, but the bench rejected the step as a viable solution and sought streamlining the entire health care system.