ISLAMABAD: Authorities in Pakistan have suspended a local doctor who was caught taking a cow home from market in an ambulance, officials said today.

“Dr Muneer Qadri was caught red handed. He was carrying a cow in an ambulance from Kunjah market to his residence in Tanda village,” the head of the local police station, Mohammad Akram, told AFP over phone. Qadri, head of a rural health centre in Tanda near the border with India, bought the animal at a nearby cattle market on Saturday. Police stopped his ambulance and found the animal inside, tied to a metal bar.

Health authorities have suspended Qadri and launched an investigation. “This is misuse of authority,” said Mohammad Muneer Ahmad, senior health officer of the nearby town of Gujrat.

“I have never heard such thing happen in the past — an ambulance carrying animal! We have suspended the doctor and the ambulance driver,” he told AFP.