DETECTIVES are continuing to question staff at Prestwich Hospital a month after a patient was found dead in a cell.

And on Monday, June 28 a second post-mortem was carried out on the body of Azrar Ayub as the authorities and his family seek to establish how he died.

Mr Ayub had been detained indefinitely at Prestwich Hospital under the Mental Health Act since June, 2000, after raping a 21-year-old woman in his home town of Oldham.

However, he was found dead in a room in the high security Edenfield Unit on May 28. Shortly before his death, the diagnosed schizophrenic is believed to have had to be restrained by a number of nursing staff when he became violent and was injected with a sedative before being detained in isolation.

However, when staff returned to check on him, they discovered the 24-year-old collapsed on the floor and efforts to revive him proved futile.

Since the death, detectives from Bury and Whitefield CID have been conducting interviews with staff on behalf of the local coroner's department.

A spokesman for the police would only confirm that interviews with staff were ongoing.