Court summons 4 docs after NCP leader’s death

The city court has issued summons to four doctors, from Shri Samarth Hospital and King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital for negligence in treating Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) corporator Rajashree Andekar early last year, who died subsequently. Doctors Suhas Kalshetty and Shankar Mali of Shri Samarth Hospital, and doctors Pradeep Dicosta and Aniket Joshi of KEM Hospital have been summoned by judicial magistrate first class (JMFC) Maya Deshmukh.

According to the complaint filed by the Andekar family, the NCP corporator, who was elected during the Pune municipal polls in 2012, was admitted to the Shri Samarth Hospital at Rasta Peth by husband Suryakant Andekar on February 5, 2016. Surayakant had shown her blood reports to Dr Kalashetti, who was their family doctor. The doctor told him that she had been diagnosed with chikungunya and needed immediate medical attention. So, Suryakant admitted his wife at Shri Samarth Hospital.

But Kalashetti was absent and her medical treatment was carried out by Mali, who had called up Kalashetti and the latter had advised him to administer some injection to the patient. Within 15 minutes of Mali giving the injection to Rajashree, she became comatose and even urinated on the bed. Seeing Rajashree’s condition, the Andekar family admitted her to KEM Hospital on the same day. Before admitting her at KEM, Suryakant and his brother Udaykant asked Dr Dicosta whether she will recover here or should be hospitalised in Mumbai. Dicosta assured them that there was no need to shift her. The doctors from the hospital would take care of her and she would recover soon, he had insisted. However, Rajashree did not come out of coma and died on September 6, 2106 in the hospital.

Soon after, her son-in-law, Ganesh Komkar, went to Samarth police station and filed a complaint against the doctors of both the hospitals. But Komkar alleged that the cops did not register the FIR. In January 2017, Komkar filed a complaint with the police commissioner, but even that didn’t prompt any action, he claimed. Suryakant told Mirror, “Shankar Mali checked my wife Rajashree and gave some injection through saline. But her condition became more critical because of that injection. We shifted her into KEM Hospital, where she was in coma for seven months. After her death, we went to the police station, but nobody took cognisance of the case.”

Finally, Komkar filed a private case in the JMFC court on January 21 under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 419 (cheating by personation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Advocate Bilal Shaikh represented the case on behalf of Komkar. Shaikh examined four witnesses during the hearing, including Komkar, Suryakant and Dr Arvind Parmar from Yashwantrao Chavan Memorial (YCM) Hospital in Pimpri-Chinchwad.

“This is a clear case of medical negligence. When Rajashree was admitted in Shri Samarth Hospital earlier, Shankar Mali gave her an injection, which he should not have been given. Even during the examination, we had called an expert who said that a wrong injection had been given to Rajashree,” Shaikh said, alleging that Mali is not even a doctor. He was working as compounder at the hospital and later called himself a doctor. “We had prayed before the court that a detailed inquiry into the matter should be conducted by the police and the people responsible for this negligence should be punished,” he added.

The court admitted the facts but dismissed the complaint under sections 419 and 304 of the IPC, instead issuing summons under Section 304 A(causing death by negligence) to all four doctors of Shri Samarth and KEM hospitals. The court in its order stated that “due to the act of the accused, the death of Rajashree Aandekar was caused”. Witness Parmar in his statement stated that there was a gross negligence on the part of the doctors treating the patient. The four doctors have been asked to be present in court on October 25.