Delhi hospital admits treating Pakistani ’suicide’ attacker

NEW DELHI - A Pakistani patient, owned by his country’s army as a matryr and suicide attacker and an operative of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was indeed treated in Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, where he died three years ago, enquiries by IANS have revealed.

According to hospital sources, a Pakistani patient named Zulfiqar Ahmed was admitted in the multi-speciality private medical facility in November 2007.

“He died of renal failure,” an official at the hospital told IANS, requesting anonymity because “our legal section is digging deeper into the case before coming on record”.

The sources said that the hospital was looking into the records to find more about the patient, who according to the Pakistan Army website was on a “suicide attack” operation.

“It is a three-year-old record and it will take time to examine,” another official said, as the hospital administration refused to say another more.

The Pakistani Army’s website - www.pakistanarmy.gov.pk - claimed that an ISI operative who was on a “suicide attack” operation died in a New Delhi hospital Nov 16, 2007.

The posting was in the “Shuhada’s (martyrs’) corner” of the website, which had previously revealed the list of Pakistan’s dead in the 1999 Kargil operation.

It named the operative as Zulfiqar Ahmed, his army number as 1726016 and his rank as naik.

The operative, the website claims, died of kidney failure and acute respiratory infection at New Delhi’s Ganga Ram Hospital.

The website however doesn’t mention where the operation was to be conducted as there was no suicide attack in Delhi or in nearby areas in or around November 2007.

The major terror attack in India before November 2007 were the Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat bombings in Hyderabad Aug 25 that year, in which 42 people were killed.

The martyr’s section lists 25 ISI operatives, with varying causes of death. Besides Ahmed, one more ISI agent who died in India in May 1973 is identified as Lance Naik Abdul Ghani.

Indian Army chief General V.K. Singh, reacting to the postings, said it has exposed the Pakistan Army’s “intentions”.

“I have nothing to say on what they (the Pakistan Army) have put up on its website. But if it has, then it clearly show what their intentions and ways are and what their next move will be,” Singh told reporters here when asked about the Pakistan Army’s website posting.

The army chief also said that India needed to be “more alert”.

“All I can say is we have to be more alert and only then we can protect the people and our troops,” he said.