Docs asked to treat prisoners in ward

Hyderabad: Following the escape of Fahauddin Qureshi on December 2, the Director General of Police has asked doctors and paramedical staff of the Mental Health Hospital to see patients in the prisoners’ ward only in the presence of cops.

Psychiatrists would earlier take rounds of the ward or would get the prisoner in the hospital premises for examination. This practice, however, gave the prisoners a lot of time to converse with paramedical staff and also allowed them to understand layout of the hospital.

This might have helped Qureshi plan his escape, said hospital sources.

They added that to avoid this, it was important that psychiatrists treated all patients in a separate room in the prisoners’ ward itself. The doctors have been asked to treat patients one at a time and to keep their conversations with the prisoners strictly professional. The number of constables outside the ward has also been increased to four.

A senior doctor at the hospital said, “These same set of protocols were set a year ago when a prisoner fled from the ward. But after two months everything was as before. The most important thing is to separate the ward from the hospital and allot proper rooms to examine such patients.”

Superintendent Dr Pramod Kumar said, “We have increased the rounds of the duty doctors. The government has also agreed to sanction Rs 50 lakh for completion of the new prisoners’ ward in the new building.”