UMERKOT: The medical superintendent of Umerkot’s Civil Hospital has been arrested over the death of a sanitary worker, allegedly due to medical practitioners’ negligence. The first information report (FIR) of the case states that when Irfan Masih, the deceased, was brought to the hospital in an unconscious state, one of the doctors on duty, identified as Dr Yousaf, refused to touch the body “covered with filth because he (doctor) was fasting”. The report – registered on a complaint filed by Pervaiz Masih, brother of the deceased – states that after the body was washed, the hospital staff brought an oxygen cylinder but it turned out to be empty. The unconscious worker breathed his last lying on the floor in a corridor of the hospital, the FIR added. Police said they were interrogating the MS, identified as Dr Jaam Kunbhar, and raids were underway to arrest the remaining five suspects, including Dr Yousaf and another doctor who was on duty when the incident took place. The FIR was registered under sections 319 (murder by negligence) and 34 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code. These sections carry a maximum punishment of five-year imprisonment; besides letting the complainants withdraw the case on payment of diyat (blood money). Two other sanitary workers had also been trapped in the sewer with Masih. They were taken to Karachi’s Liaqat Hospital, where one of them was reported to be in a life-threatening situation. In his statements to the media, Pervaiz Masih had alleged that Dr Yousaf refused to treat his brother, saying that he was fasting and would not touch the “body covered in filth until it was cleaned”. The FIR said that Irfan Masih was cleaning a sewer early Thursday morning when he fell unconscious. Two other workers who jumped in to rescue him also fell passed out after inhaling sewer gas – a complex mixture of toxic and non-toxic gases produced and collected in sewage systems by the decomposition of organic household or industrial wastes.