In a landmark order, the Tripura High Court has held that medical professionals are liable for criminal negligence, but cautioned that the courts have to be careful while framing charges.
The single bench of Chief Justice Deepak Kumar Gupta made the observation after rejecting a review petition of a doctor against the trial procedure of the lower court for committing negligence while operating on a patient. Advocate Bhaskar Deb, who pleaded for the respondents, said on Friday after the order of Chief Justice is categorical on the issue of slapping criminal negligence charge against the doctors. “Since the Chief Justice has issued the order there cannot be any further review appeal in the High Court,” he observed.
The latest order was passed recently in a long drawn case moved by senior photo journalist Bapi Roy Choudhury over ‘criminal negligence’ committed during a laparoscopic internal cholecystecetomy on his wife in 2006. Dr. Pratap Sanyal, who performed the operation at his Care and Cure polyclinic in Agartala, left an 8-inch long corrugated rubber drain pipe in the abdomen, but did nothing to rectify the problem though his patient complained of severe abdominal pain.
“He just took the matter casually and repeatedly prescribed pain-killer tablets without checking my wife medically to redress her. The presence of a foreign element was detected during a CT Scan at G.B. Hospital in Agartala, and my wife was operated in Kolkata after a series of tests to remove the rubber pipe,” said Mr. Choudhury. Dr. Pratap Sanyal had in 2011 submitted the petition in the High Court to block the lower court’s move to initiate criminal proceeding against him on charge of gross negligence. While setting aside the review petition, Chief Justice Gupta opined that the case prima facie established a gross criminal negligence and said the ‘petition (of Dr Sanyal) has no merit’.
Justice Gupta, however, passed a general observation suggesting that the courts should be very careful before issuing or framing charge on complaints of criminal negligence against the doctors.
“If a doctor is always scared that criminal proceedings may be initiated against him, he would not be able to give proper treatment’, he commented in the order.
