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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Prof. Dr. Sheikh Jalal

Prof. Dr. Sheikh JALAL
India's eminent cardiologist Prof. Dr. Sheikh Jalal died after cardiac arrest in the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here on Saturday, a month after he was critically injured in a suspected militant attack in his hometown Pampore, near Srinagar.

The attack occurred on July 18, when Dr. Sheikh Jalal was on his way to attend a condolence meeting, after examining patients for free in his clinic. Both his police guards died on the spot and the assassins decamped with their arms and ammunition.

However, no militant outfit has claimed responsibility for the attack in which his eyes, chest, lungs and other organs were severely damaged. Hospital sources told The Hindu that Dr. Sheikh Jalal developed infection in the lungs which led to multiple organ failure.

Dr. Sheikh  Jalal was Director of the prestigious tertiary care hospital, Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), in Srinagar for three years after heading the Department of Cardiology and working as Dean of the Medical Faculty for over 15 years. It was at the AIIMS, that he had got his degree of Doctor of Medicine in Cardiology in the 1980s.

The body, embalmed after post-mortem, will be flown to Srinagar early on Sunday. Family sources said the funeral would be performed at Pampore.
Ahmad Ali Fayaz in Srinagar

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, along with his wife, visited the AIIMS to console Dr. Sheikh Jalal's wife Masooda Rajpuri, a retired Registrar of SKIMS, a deemed university.

Political leaders and the intelligentsia in Jammu and Kashmir described the death of Dr. Sheikh Jalal as an irreparable loss to the State, while the medical fraternity is shocked. “His contribution to infrastructure development at SKIMS stands unparalleled,” Head of CVTS Ghulam Nabi Lone, said.
Dr. Jalal is the second senior faculty member of SKIMS who has been shot dead by suspected militants in J&K, after the fatal attack on eminent cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon Abdul Ahad Guru in 1991-92.

Dr. Guru, who had returned from Buffalo in the U.S. to serve the people in his State, was shot dead a day after he was kidnapped from SKIMS. Known for his proximity to the pioneering guerrilla group Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Dr. Guru, it is widely believed, was eliminated by a rival militant outfit.

However, the retired bureaucrat Wajahat Habibullah, who was Divisional Commissioner of Kashmir in 1992-93 and who later gained proximity to separatists like JKLF chief Yasin Malik, added a new dimension to the episode when he wrote in a book that Dr. Guru's murder was engineered by a government agency which later got his assassin eliminated in a covert operation.
The attack occurred on July 18, when Dr. Jalal was on his way to attend a condolence meeting, after examining patients for free in his clinic