LARKANA, April 27: Patients at the Chandka Medical College Hospital suffered unannounced load shedding as the mercury continued to soar with the advent of summer, patients admitted to the hospital, their attendants and hospital administrators complained on Saturday.

Power supply was being arbitrarily suspended to the Chandka sub-division for the past few days, the medical superintendent of the CMCH, Dr Syed Mehboob Shah, said in a communication sent to the superintending engineer of Hesco, Larkana.

He said that the loadshedding, which was carried out without any intimation to the hospital authorities and mostly commenced in the morning hours lasting several hours, jeopardised the life of patients undergoing operations or recuperating afterwards.

Dr Shah, while expressing the fear that the unannounced interruptions in the power supply could lead to deaths of patients undergoing critical operations, pleaded to Hesco authorities to desist or at least control the occurrence of such haphazard power shutdowns.

Meanwhile, certain parts of Larkana, including Karam Bagh, Leela Abad and areas adjoining Bakrani Road witnessed a four-hour- long power failure on Saturday.

When this correspondent tried to inquire the cause of the power suspension, someone at the grid station attributed the power shutdown to “a cable breakdown near the grid station.”

However, residents of Allahabad complained that the power failure was a routine in their area, adding that the if they asked about the cause of the power supply failure, the company’s officials usually told them that a power shutdown had been “ordered by the SDO or the line superintendent to fix a fault.”

Their area, they said, had remained without electricity for over 14 hours on Friday.

MURDER ATTEMPT: A woman, Sharma Mochi, was admitted on Saturday to the Chandka Medical Hospital with serious injuries after her husband allegedly tried to slit her throat with a sharp instrument in Pirgoth near Waggan, 30km off here.

The woman was rushed to the hospital after her neighbours rescued her from her husband, Ghous Bakhsh, who they said had been trying to slash her throat with a sharp cutter.

They overpowered Ghous Bakhsh and handed him over to the police.

When contacted by this correspondent, doctors at the hospital said that she had suffered major traumatic injuries and her life was still in danger.

Her husband, who had been arrested by the police for the attempted murder, attributed the murder attempt to Karo-kari but the local residents said that the incident was the outcome of a domestic dispute.