AMRI families raise arrest question

By Rith Basu

Calcutta, Jan. 22: As many as 68 families who lost relatives in the AMRI Dhakuria fire met at the Nandan complex this morning to raise safety awareness but some were unable to mask the anger at police's inability to arrest anyone on duty that night.
"I still can't forget how the security personnel kept insisting that the smoke could never enter the ICU, where my father was. He was a cardiac patient and his hands were tied to the bed. But they did not allow me to carry him down," said Raja Ganguly, whose father Jaharlal was in the fourth-floor ICU of annexe I.
Fumes from a fire in the basement on the morning of December 9 had choked 91 people to death, all but two of them patients of the hospital.
"I had sprinted up the stairs…. But they gave me the impression that the ICUs were fire- and smoke-proof. I believed them," said Ganguly, who works for a multinational.
The relatives of the victims have formed the Human Healthright Forum. Today's was the third meeting and the biggest so far. It was also the stormiest because a degree of frustration appears to be setting in after the initial burst of action by the investigators after the December 9 tragedy.
The police have so far arrested six owner-directors of AMRI, its executive director and two managers.
But none of the personnel against whom the victims' relatives have levelled one allegation after another has been brought to book.
Dhananjay Pal, a state health department employee, too had kept pleading with a security officer to switch off the central AC to prevent the smoke from spreading. "Not only did they keep ignoring me, the man seemingly in charge of security had said 'Pagaltake boshiye de to (make this madman sit somewhere). He is too much of a nag'. That prompted the other guards to shove me away," Pal said today.
His 15-year-old daughter Prakrita was in the hospital with a head injury after having fallen from the pillion of her father's bike. She was getting better when the fire took her away.
"My daughter would have been shifted to a general bed on December 10. There, she would have got food to her liking after four days. She was excited," Pal said.
"We want all the guilty to be punished. The combined callousness of a lot of people was responsible for the deaths," a relative of another victim said today. "Those people were untrained in dealing with an emergency and yet they misguided us," she added.
Sections of the police themselves are asking similar questions. "If the directors are held responsible for the incident that morning, why should the officials who physically stopped patients from leaving the hospital and prohibited the entry of relatives not be arrested?" wondered a police officer who is not part of the probe.
Members of the special investigating team cited their logic. "The seven directors were arrested only after conclusive evidence, proving both knowledge and intention, had been procured against them," an officer said.
Two senior employees, Sanjib Pal, assistant general manager (maintenance), and Satyabrata Upadhyay, vice-president (projects) and chairman of the safety committee, were arrested later. "Pal had signed on the affidavit against which the hospital had got a conditional NOC from the fire department while Upadhyay, being the chairman of the fire safety commission, can be directly held responsible," an officer said.
"We have been interrogating many of the employees. They could be arrested, too," he added.
This is what the police have been saying for a month and a half.
"The appearance being given is that the police have got clinching evidence against the directors. If that is true, why not chargesheet them?" said Subhashis Chakraborty, who lost his wife, Munmun, 38. He has an 11-year-old daughter and a toddler son. The police have to file a chargesheet within 90 days.
The forum pledged today not to accept the Rs 5-lakh compensation offered by AMRI.
Paromita Guha, whose mother Mridula was one of the victims, said they would fight for "just compensation" decided by an independent authority. "Over 90 people lost their lives because of the gross negligence like turning off fire alarms and not calling the police and the fire brigade on time. How can the AMRI management decide the compensation amount?" she asked.
The families hope to move the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.
They also decided to write to the chief minister voicing their concern. "Our only hope is the power of public memory. If it fades, there is little hope for us," said Surajit Bose, who lost his mother.

The above is from the Telegraph.

I agree with the affected people that the persons who held back the patients relatives and prevented them should also be prosecuted.
I also agree that the compensation amount is not sufficient.
It should be the same as the AMRI doctors have been made to cough up in the case of Dr. Saha wh lost his wife because of negligence by AMRI, i.e Rs 1.73 crore per victim. Some advocate should take up the class action suit to represent all the victims agaist the management of AMRI.