NEW DELHI, December 7: The Delhi High Court today issued show-cause notices to Delhi Police Commissioner V N Singh, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the medical superintendent of an MCD-run hospital for the death of a patient allegedly due to negligence and subsequent inaction in registering an FIR. A division bench comprising justices Devinder Gupta and Mukul Mudgal directed the respondents, including the Station House Officer (SHO) of the Mukherjee Nagar police station, to reply to the notices within four weeks. The matter has been listed for further hearing on March 8 next year.In a joint petition, Droopti Devi and Sanjiv Kumar, wife and son of the deceased, have stated that Ved Prakash died at the Rajan Babu Tuberculosis Hospital (RTBH) due to ``totally rash and negligent acts and omissions'' and hence the erring doctors were liable to be prosecuted.
Counsel for petitioners Ashok Aggarwal submitted that MCD was liable to pay a suitable amount of compensation to the family of the victim.
He said that Ved Prakash was admitted to RTBH on October 11 and was not attended to by any senior doctor/chest physician till October 21, when a senior doctor advised a chest X-ray and fluid tapping to be conducted the next day.
The petition states that during the three check-ups on October 12, 15 and 20, junior doctors treated Ved Prakash in a way totally irrelevant to the primary disease a case of `pleural effusion' which had progressed to `pyophemothorax' (fluid converted to pus). Aggarwal said that a junior doctor performed `intercostal intubation' on the patient in the absence of a senior doctor or chest specialist. The petition alleges that the junior doctor inserted the intercostal tube into Ved Prakash's stomach instead of chest, which resulted in the patient's death within 15 minutes.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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