Pune – 11 doctors booked for ‘death due to negligence’ during heart surgery

NPnews24 Online Pune: A total of eleven doctors of a prominent hospital in Wanowrie have been booked by Pune city police on charges of causing death due to negligence in handling complications during a heart surgery that led to the death of a 34-year-old man in April last year.

The deceased has been identified as Bhairavnath Dhalgade, a native of Osmanabad. He was admitted to the Rasiklal M Dhariwal Heart Care and Research Institute in Fatimanagar and a surgery was performed to replace his heart valve.

His condition had deteriorated and he died on April 17, 2018. An in-camera postmortem was conducted at the Sassoon hospital. Initially, a case of accidental death (AD) was registered with Wanowrie police station pending expert committee report of the Sassoon hospital. His wife Sunita lodged the complaint.

DCP (zone 5) Prakash Gaikwad said, “The expert committee found l negligence and accordingly we have registered an FIR against 11 doctors for offences under section 304a (causing death due to negligence) of the Indian Penal Code.”

According to the FIR, the doctors did not seem to have taken any “informed consent” from the patient’s immediate relatives before performing the suvrgery nor did they specify the process to be opted for the surgery and the risk involved in such operations.

Dr Ranjit Jagtap, the chief of the hospital, who led the doctors’ team for the surgery, refuted the committee’s report and claimed that there was no negligence.