The Karnataka High Court on Monday allowed criminal trial against two doctors. It said the trial was essential to ascertain the cause and time of death of a pregnant woman and her unborn child as there were serious differences between the claims of doctors who had treated her and the post-mortem report.
Justice Anand Byrareddy passed the order while dismissing the petitions filed by doctors Indira Rao and Anil Kumar Sakalecha questioning the criminal proceedings initiated based on the charge sheet filed against them in connection with the death of Kapali Patne.
Kapali had died in the operation theatre of a private hospital on April 16, 2010, when she was admitted for elective Caesarean section.
The accused doctors had claimed that the woman had died due to “anaphylactic shock” caused due to violent reaction to anaesthesia. They contended that they could be, at the most, “liable in tort” for not taking proper care and caution, and “not liable for criminal prosecution”. They had also cited the Supreme Court’s verdicts of protecting medical doctors from unnecessary criminal prosecution.
However, Parikshit Dalal, Kapali’s husband, who had lodged a complaint with the police, had contended that his wife had died due to negligence of doctors, and the hospital records were tampered with to protect the doctors. The autopsy report had found that the death was due to “shock and haemorrhage as a result of the injury to the pelvis (fracture of left sacroiliac joint)”.
While dismissing the petitions, the court noticed that there were glaring inconsistencies in the cause and time of death of the patient in the hospital records based on doctor’s observations and in the post-mortem report.
The court also noted that the investigating agency had found that digital copies of scanning details of the patient were found to be deleted from the hospital’s computer server whereas the forensic study of the computer server had detected storage of digital copies of scanning reports of many patients for the past three years.
