“Is DDU Hospital well-equipped to treat Tihar inmates?” Court asks Delhi govt.

The Delhi High Court has directed the Delhi Government to file a report on the availability of medical facilities at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital to see whether it is well-equipped to treat Tihar Jail inmates.

While asking the Government to file a report on the medical logistics at the hospital, the Bench said that if the hospital was found wanting in certain departments it would then issue directions to upgrade the facilities there.

A Division Bench of the Court comprising Justice Gita Mital and Justice V.K. Shali passed the direction while going through an inquiry report by an Army hospital (Referral and Research) here on the medical visits of Vikas and Vishal Yadav, serving life imprisonment in the Nitish Katara murder case, who were on several occasions sent from the jail to All-India Institute of Medical Sciences and Batra Hospital respectively instead of DDU Hospital for treatment of their illness.

The report, submitted after an inquiry into the medical visits of the two convicts on a Court direction, said that majority of their visits to the two hospitals were not required. It was the second report by the Army hospital as its first report did not have the full details about the medical visits of the two convicts.

Cops dismissed

Meanwhile, two constables who had accompanied Vikas Yadav to AIIMS have been dismissed from service. Delhi Government counsel submitted this information to the Bench on Friday. The constables had earlier been placed under suspension.

The Bench also sought a reply from the Government on an application by Neelam Katara, mother of Nitish Katara, seeking inquiry by an independent agency into the circumstances in which the two convicts visited AIIMS and Batra Hospital.

The two constables had been deployed to keep a watch on the movements of Vikas during the treatment at AIIMS.

They were suspended when it was revealed in a medical report filed by AIIMS in the Court that Vikas Yadav was absent from his room on Diwali night last year and had returned there the next morning. The two constables were with him on that night.

AIIMS had filed the report on a direction by the Court on a petition by Ms. Katara charging that Vikas Yadav and Vishal Yadav had misused their political and financial clout to get out of the jail on the pretext of going out for medical treatment.

Ms. Katara had also charged that Vishal Yadav had raised a bill of Rs. 50,000 on phone calls from Batra Hospital when he was admitted there. She had alleged that the Government had incurred an expenditure of Rs. 20 lakh on the treatment on the two convicts.

Ms. Katara had moved the Court after obtaining details of the hospital visits of the two convicts after their conviction by the trial court through Right to Information Act.