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| 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.
Until his death, he served as Vice-President of the Diplomate of National Board in India.
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
