ISLAMABAD: The prosecution in the high treason case rejected on Monday a military doctors’ report on the health of retired General Pervez Musharraf and termed it an “attempt to thwart the judicial process”.

The three-member special court headed by Justice Faisal Arab of the Sindh High Court had on Jan 16 ordered formation of a medical board comprising senior doctors of the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology to verify the state of health of Gen Musharraf.

Advocate Mohammad Akram Sheikh, head of the prosecution team, submitted an application before the court and raised a number of objections to the report prepared by the medical board comprising Maj Gen Syed Imran Majeed, commandant and executive director of AFIC; Brigadier Safdar Abbas, deputy commandant of AFIC; Brigadier Mohammad Qaiser Khan and Colonel Mohammad Afsheen Iqbal of AFIC and National Institute of Heart Diseases.

In its report, the medical board declared the condition of Gen Musharraf as critical and recommended his treatment at a place of his choice.

The prosecution said “the (AFIC) report is inconclusive and makes attempts to thwart the judicial process by urging the special court to come to a decision regarding further procedures / interventions without expressing as to whether the prerequisite tests prior to angiogram have been performed, indicating the necessarily for the same”.

It said findings of the report were inconclusive and deliberately vague. “The report discloses no reasons as to why a patient of such a disease needs constant hospitalisation since Jan 2, especially without any progress in his clinical evaluation or management.”

The prosecution said the medical report was unsatisfactory and did not even come close to addressing any of the questions which the board was bound to answer in terms of court’s Jan 16 order.It said the AFIC had been asked to state “how precarious is the health condition of the accused which restricts his movement so as to prevent him from attending the court? Has the accused undergone any surgery or other medical procedure during his stay in the hospital or any surgery or medical procedure is planned to be undertaken during his hospitalisation? For how long the accused has been advised for further hospitalisation?”

It said the instant medical report had come to an erroneous conclusion regarding the state of health of the accused.

The prosecution incorporated into the report the opinion of US cardiologist Dr Ismail Bokhari which said that the “cardiac examination (of Musharraf) was perfectly normal …this patient is in the hospital since Jan 2 and continues to have normal electrocardiograms and cardiac biomarkers. Chance for serious cardiac disease is very low”.

The prosecution contended that military doctors had submitted a self-styled report and it was virtually a duplication of the report of Jan 7 in which the AFIC recommended “coronary angiography” for Gen Musharraf to ascertain the possibility of further interventions, like coronary artery bypass surgery.

“The medical report reveals that no further tests have been carried out on the accused since the submission of the last medical report which has been submitted after a gap of sixteen days and the same diagnosis of coronary angiography is reiterated.”

The prosecution said: “In the instant report the board has come to an entirely new conclusion on the same data as before that this disease is of ‘grave concern’. That if such a grave concern was present as is alleged, then the question arises as to why this concern was not either shown in the first report or why no further diagnostic testing been has carried out. The report also has not suggested any aggressive management of the disease, which shockingly suggests absence of any cardiac ailment.”

It said such a long hospitalisation when no diagnostic process had to be carried out was against the established norms of medical rules. “It is now manifest that the accused is prolonging stay in hospital in order to evade the judicial process.”

The prosecution requested the court to pass appropriate orders for the attendance of the accused as per the mandate of law.