SC awards Rs.5.96 crore medical negligence compensation

The Supreme Court Thursday awarded Rs.5.96 crore compensation to Kunal Saha, an Indian-American doctor, ordering the Kolkata-based Advance Medicare Research Institute to pay for medical negligence resulting in the death of his wife Anuradha Saha in 1988.

A bench of Justice C.K. Prasad and Justice V. Gopala Gowda passed the order on an appeal by Saha, who had challenged the compensation of Rs.1.72 crore awarded by National Consumer Forum. Saha is a US-based NRI.

The apex court earlier held some of the doctors of the hospital liable for criminal liability.

The court directed that the hospital would pay the compensation along with an interest of 6 percent per annum from 1998. The court has asked two doctors - Balram Prakash and Sukamar Mukharjee - to pay Rs.10 lakh each and asked another doctor, Baidyanath Haldar, to pay Rs.5 lakh to Saha.

The tragic story of Anuradha started a month after she reached Kolkata in March 1998 for her summer vacation, when in April, some rashes surfaced on her skin. She consulted Mukharjee who advised her rest.

However, rashes resurfaced again in early May with far greater intensity. Mukharjee prescribed her two doses of Depomedrol injection every day.

As her condition did not improve, she was admitted to AMRI and subsequently she was shifted to Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital where she was diagnosed to be suffering from life-threatening disease called toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN). At AMRI, Anuradha was treated by Mukharjee.

TEN, also known as Lyell's syndrome, is generally caused by a reaction to drugs and leads to the top layer of skin detaching from the lower layer all over the body. It is a more severe form of Stevens-Johnson syndrome.

Anuradha succumbed to her ailment May 28, 1998.