MANSEHRA: The district and sessions judge of Kohistan has ordered local police yet again to produce five women seen in the controversial video or their families on April 23.

The fresh orders were issued on Wednesday after police failed to produce the people in question before the court.

The video had showed the said women cheering and two men dancing during a private function.

Police claimed that women seen in the video were alive but couldn’t appear before the court due to societal restrictions.

They said they were to produce members of the women’s families but it didn’t happen due to the landslide-triggered blockade of the Karakoram Highway.

After hearing police and lawyer of the National Commission on the Status of Women on March 18, judge Sardar Mohammad Arshad had ordered police either to produce women or their families on April 2 when the former failed to produce women in the court.A representative of police told the court that the Karakoram Highway and other roads leading to five women’s village had been blocked for several days, so neither police could reach there nor families of women could reach Mansehra.

The judge asked police again to produce either women in question or members of their families on the next hearing.

The NCSW had moved the court insisting women seen in the video were killed by their families earlier this year.

On June 16 last year, members of a fact-finding mission formed by then Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and headed by senior judge Munira Abbasi had met the women in question.

BEDDING CAPACITY HALVED: The bedding capacity of King Abdullah Teaching Hospital (Kath) has been halved.

This was disclosed during an Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority briefing to a delegation of Saudi Arabia and federal religious affairs minister Sardar Mohammad Yousaf at the inauguration of the hospital’s emergency department here on Wednesday.

Work on the hospital, which was destroyed during the Oct 2005 earthquake, is still underway.

The Saudi delegation comprising Hassan Al-Attas, Abdullah M Al-Shoaibi and Bandr Aljarbi along with the minister visited various sections of the hospital.

A Erra representative told them that the hospital was being reconstructed with the Rs500 million Saudi grant.

He said lack of funds had led to the reduction of the hospital’s bedding from 500 to 250.

The representative said 74 per cent of work on the hospital, which began in 2012 and was slated to be completed in 2012, was over.

Head of the Saudi delegation Al-Attas said the hospital was a gift of Saudi people and government for their Pakistani brethrens and if Erra demanded provision of machinery and other equipment for the hospital, they would seriously think about it.

He said work on 18 basic health units and rural health centres destroyed in the Oct 2005 earthquake were completed with the help of Saudi funding and that he wished to see work on the hospital complete early.

The minister thanked Saudi people and government for funding reconstruction of health and educational facilities in Mansehra.

He said Erra had assured him that the hospital would be reconstructed in six months.

Mr Yousaf objected to the reduction of the hospital’s bedding capacity and said beds should be added to the facility instead of being removed.

PML-N leaders Zafar Mehmood and Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman also demanded that Erra restore the hospital’s 500 bedding capacity.

They said the hospital was catering for the needs of upper parts of Hazara, so halving its bedding capacity was an attempt to deprive local residents of health services.