A day after the Jammu and Kashmir Government suspended two doctors,including a gynaecologist who was the first to confirm rape of the two women found murdered in Shopian,doctors in the Valley have threatened to suspend work from the next week in case the order is not revoked immediately. "We will suspend work in all hospitals of Kashmir from next week onwards," said president of Specialist Doctors' Association,Kashmir,(SDAK) Syed Qawnain. "We will meet all other associations of doctors and will come out on the streets if the Government does not revoke this order with immediate effect." On Thursday,the J-K Government suspended Dr Shaheen and Dr Ahmed for "professional incompetence and negligence". While Dr Bilal Ahmed was part of the two-member team which performed the first autopsies on Neelofar and her sister-in-law Asiya,Dr Nighat Shaheen,a specialist at Pulwama district hospital,was part of the team of doctors who performed the second autopsies. The SDAK said the two doctors were being victimised for speaking the truth about the Shopian incident. "Dr Nighat was the first to confirm that Asiya and Neelofar were gangraped before being murdered," the doctors' body added. The doctors' association also appealed to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah not to fall prey to the machinations of bureaucrats. "The heads should roll from top,and action should be taken against the top brass and not against those doctors who helped bring out the truth," Qawnain said. The Government had suspended five officials including former police chief of Shopian after the Judicial Commission,set up to probe the case,indicted the police,civil administration,Forensic Science Laboratory and the medical teams for serious lapses in investigations and postmortem procedure. The suspension of the doctors was also criticised by Majlis-i-Mushawarat (the consultative committee spearheading the Shopian protests against the rape and murder of the two women) and the Peoples' Democratic Party.
