Story By: Feza Uzay, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
A wife whose barber husband went to Turkey for a routine hair transplant was shocked when she got a call to say he had died before the operation.
The doctor who was looking after the man has been arrested after his family complained and alleged that a person who visited the body of Ibrahim Gul in the morgue found it covered in blood.
The 28-year-old who was the father of child had moved with his young family to Italy to start his own hairdressing business.
But although his business was successful he was unhappy about his own receding hairline, so he booked himself up an appointment for a routine hair transplant in the district of Bagcilar in the Turkish province of Istanbul on Saturday (11th September).
The local news site DHA reports that Ibrahim had been planning to head back to Turkey anyway last Thursday (9th September) to buy supplies for his barbershop anyway, and decided to have the hair transplant done at the same time.
According to DHA, Ibrahim visited the Medicine Hospital in the district of Bagcilar where he was booked in for the operation on Saturday.
But on the day the operation was supposed to take place, Ibrahim’s wife, who was not named, got a call from the hospital saying her husband had died of a heart attack.
She said she found it hard to believe, and asked a friend of her husband’s who he had previously worked for while he was training as a barber to confirm what had happened.
The friend, Dilek Ozbek, had then been allowed to see the body in the morgue and was shocked to find it covered in blood.
Dilek Ozbek said: “Ibrahim’s wife called me on Saturday (11th September) at around 5 pm. She said that Ibrahim had suffered a heart attack and asked me to go to the hospital to see him.
“I went to see him in the morgue where I found his body wrapped in a shroud [a traditional burial sheet] soaked in blood. The hospital said it was a heart attack but that’s clearly not true. There was blood everywhere.”
Ahmet Yigit, Ibrahim’s uncle, said: “The hospital told us he had a heart attack. They said they did angiography and put in a stent. Whether they performed heart surgery or transplanted hair, nothing is certain. He was a young healthy man.”
The death is being regarded as suspicious as an angiography and stent is normally minimally invasive.
Istanbul Police Department made a statement regarding the suspicious death and confirmed that the doctor in charge of the operation, Mehmet Albayrak, had been detained.
Albayrak will remain in custody while the police carry out their investigation.
Local media reports that Albayrak told the police: “The patient reported no issue when he arrived for the operation. This situation could not have been foreseen by anyone.”
