HC orders Odisha govt to pay compensation to advocate

Orissa High Court has directed the state government to pay compensation of Rs 50,000 each to an advocate and his nephew for being mentally and physically tortured by a group of unruly medicos of SCB Medical College and Hospital here in 2000.
A single-judge bench of Justice B K Patel adjudicating over a writ petition on Friday ordered the state government to pay the compensation amount to the petitioners within eight weeks of the pronouncement of the judgement.
The order of the HC came as per the recommendation of Justice P K Mishra Commission of Enquiry, which in 2002 had observed both advocate Manoj Kumar Mohanty and his nephew Biswa Bijay Mohanty were brutally tortured in a hostel of the medical college throughout the intervening night of July 16-17, 2000.

The Enquiry Commission report, recommending the state government to pay damage of Rs 50,000 each to uncle-nephew duo, was laid in the State Assembly in July 2002.
However, when the state government did not act upon the recommendation of the Enquiry Commission for more than 10 years, the victims approached the High Court through a writ petition.
The case pertains to the death of advocate Manoj Kumar Mohanty's father on July 16, 2000 due to alleged negligence in treatment in the hospital.
The advocate had alleged that while his father was writhing in pain after a surgery in his cabin, the resident surgeons, instead of attending to his father, were watching pornographic movies in their rest room.

When it was brought to the notice of hospital authorities, irate medicos forcibly dragged Mohanty and his nephew to a nearby hostel and beat them mercilessly. The duo was also subjected to inhuman torture by cigarette butts and piercing their bodies with injection needles, it was alleged.