SC awards NRI doctor Rs 5.96 cr compensation: All you need to know

The Supreme Court today awarded Rs 5.96 crore as compensation to be paid by Kolkata-based AMRI Hospital and three doctors to a US-based NRI doctor for medical negligence which led to the death of his wife in 1998.

The doctor Kunal Saha, told CNN-IBN in a Skype interview, “The amount in Indian context should send a strong signal to the negligent doctors and hospitals in India. I’m pleased, but I will have to see what exactly they have done and what are the grounds because in India cases of medical negligence appear in the news every single day but hardly anybody gets justice.”

Here is all you need to know about the case:

* Saha’s wife Anuradha, a child psychologist, had come to her home town Kolkata in March 1998 on a summer vacation.

* She complained of skin rashes on 25 April 1998 and consulted Dr Sukumar Mukherjee, who, without prescribing any medicine, asked her to take rest.

* As rashes reappeared more aggressively on 7 May 1998, Dr Mukherjee prescribed Depomedrol injection 80 mg twice daily, a step which was later faulted by experts at the apex court.

* After administration of the injection, Anuradha’s condition deteriorated rapidly following which she had to be admitted at AMRI on 11 May under Dr Mukherjee’s supervision.

* As Anuradha’s condition failed to improve, she was flown to Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai, where she was found to be suffering from a rare and deadly skin disease–Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN).

* She died in Mumbai on 28 May 1998.

* Kunal Saha had then filed a criminal as well as civil case against the doctors and both the hospitals on the ground that they were grossly negligent in her treatment leading to her death.

* In 2009, though the apex court absolved the doctors and the hospitals of criminal liability for medical negligence, it had held them culpable of civil liabilities and referred Saha’s plea for compensation under provisions of the Consumer Protection Act to National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission (NCDRC), which, had in 2006 dismissed the case.

* After the NCDRC judgement, Saha had again moved the apex court and the three doctors had also filed an appeal before it.

* NCDRC, in its judgement, had stipulated that AMRI and Dr Mukherjee would pay Rs 40.4 lakh each to Saha, while two other doctors, Halder and Prasad, would pay Rs 26.93 lakh each to him.

* A bench of justices SJ Mukhopadhaya and V Gopala Gowda asked the hospital and the three doctors to pay the amount within eight weeks to Kunal Saha, an Ohio-based AIDS researcher.

* While awarding Rs 1,72,87,500 as compensation to Saha for his wife’s death, NCDRC had held the US doctor responsible for contributing to the negligence committed by the three Kolkata doctors and the hospital and had ordered 10 percent deduction in the amount of compensation making it Rs 1.55 crore.

* Another doctor involved in Anuradha’s treatment, Abani Roy Chowdhury had passed away during the pendency of the case.

With PTI inputs