The Allahabad High Court has termed as ‘serious misconduct’ the case of a COVID-19 patient who had gone ‘missing’ from the Lala Lajpat Rai Medical College at Meerut on April 22.
The court was hearing a public interest litigation on Monday when it made the aforementioned observation in regard to the case of Santosh Kumar (64), whose body was disposed of without identification.
The patient was admitted to the medical college on reference from the district hospital of Ghaziabad on April 21.
On the night of April 22, he went to the washroom and fainted there. The doctor in charge of the isolation ward, where Kumar was admitted, was not on duty. Efforts were made to revive the patient but he passed away soon thereafter. The morning shift of staff then arrived.
“Dr. Tanishq Utkarsh got the body removed from the place and all efforts to identify the person went in vain. He could not trace out the file of the patient in isolation ward and even after counting the number of patients on file, the dead person could not be identified. Thus, it was taken to be a case of unidentified body and even the team that was on night duty could not recognise it. So the body was packed in a bag and was disposed of,” the court noted.
Utkarsh was the doctor on duty when the patient had been admitted.
A report on the incident was submitted by a three-member committee to the principal of the college on May 12.
Referring to this report, the court said, “…it comes out to be a case of high-degree carelessness on the part of the doctors who were on night duty”.
It said that if this was the case in a big city like Meerut, the status of healthcare in smaller cities and villages, “… can only be taken to be like a famous Hindi saying Ram bharose (on the will of God)”.
The court also said that the action taken against the paramedical staff and doctors and that of withholding their annual increment was insufficient.
“We are not satisfied the way the state has dealt with this issue. A patient is admitted to the hospital in an absolute care of doctors and paramedical staff and if the doctors and paramedical staff adopt such casual approach and show carelessness in the performance of their duty, then it is a case of serious misconduct because it is something like playing with the lives of innocent people,” the court noted.
The court has directed the state’s additional chief secretary (medical and health) to file an affidavit fixing responsibility in the matter and compensating the dependents of the deceased.
A compliance affidavit on the same is to be filed within a week.
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Kumar’s case had hit the headlines when his daughter made a video, addressed to the state’s chief minister about her ‘missing’ father two weeks after he had been admitted to the medical college.
The hospital authorities had claimed that they could not get in touch with the patient’s family as contact details were not provided. The family had denied this.
