Undertrial prisoner escapes from Karachi's Jinnah hospital

Karachi: An undertrial prisoner, brought to Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) for an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan, escaped from the hospital, ARY News reported.

According to JPMC sources and police authorities, the accused named Agha Salman, who was under police custody in a drug case, managed to flee from the Radiology Department of the hospital, taking advantage of the guard’s negligence.

Salman was inmate of the District Jail Malir and was brought to the hospital by the court police for an MRI scan, from where he somehow slipped out of the window of washroom.

The prisoner deceived the guard, by pretending to go to the washroom and then escaped after jumping from the window, the sources said.

The guard assigned to Salman’s monitoring has been suspended, and police investigation is underway. The police department is also reviewing the hospital’s security footage to determine how this escape occurred and trying to catch the fleeing prisoner.

A manhunt has been launched to recapture Salman, with police teams scouring the surroundings. The authorities have also alerted nearby checkpoints.

In a similar incident last month, a prisoner escaped from Malir jail through toilet window.

The prisoner, named Muhammad Javed, escaped by cutting the bathroom window and using a bedsheet as a rope to climb over the wall, police explained.

The prisoner was a convict in a rape case and imprisoned in barrack number 5.