Pakistan to award two Mumbai doctors who hid Jinnah’s TB

Aaj Tak reports that Pakistan has approved its highest civilian award, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, for two Indian Parsi doctors from Bombay, now Mumbai. Physicians Dr Jal Ratanji Patel and radiologist Dr Jal Dhaybhoo-Koo are being recognised for keeping Muhammad Ali Jinnah's grave illness a secret in the critical period before the 1947 partition of India.

Pakistan's Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal, who also heads the awards committee, announced the nomination on X. He said the doctors were being honoured for their "quiet but extraordinary service" in ensuring that knowledge of Jinnah's serious condition remained confined to a small circle including his sister Fatima Jinnah.

According to the book 'Freedom at Midnight' by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, the doctors examined Jinnah's X-rays in 1946 and found advanced tuberculosis. They believed he had only a year or two to live. Some historians say that if leaders like Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru, or Mahatma Gandhi had known, the partition might have been delayed or avoided. Jinnah died of TB on September 11, 1948. The awards will be conferred at a ceremony in March 2027.