Jaya death probe: HC reserves orders on Apollo Hospitals' plea

The Madras High Court Tuesday reserved its orders on a petition of the Apollo Hospitals, seeking quashing of proceedings related to two Government Orders of September 2017 over treatment given to former chief minister Jayalalithaa before her death.

The division bench, comprising Justices R Subbiah and Krishnan Ramaswamy, said it was reserving the orders after hearing counsels representing the Apollo Hospitals, the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission and the government.

The Apollo Hospitals submitted that this was the first time in independent India that a Commission of Inquiry was allowed to go into the correctness of the medical treatment given to a political leader.

Senior counsel P S Raman, who appeared on behalf of the hospital, submitted that their team had done extensive research over the past three days but could not find a single precedent in the country.

"However, internationally in 1980 when a African leader died after hospitalization in a government hospital, such an inquiry was done, that too in view of the then prevailing political situation," he said.

Alleging that the Commission was constituted only for political reasons, he sought to know how any hospital would provide and accept giving treatment to any such leader in future if such a probe was ordered to go into the correctness of the treatment given.

Reiterating that the people are concerned with the circumstances that led to the hospitalization of the former Chief Minister, the counsel said people are not concerned with the treatment given by the hospital to Jayalalithaa.

On the charge that the five-member government-appointed medical panel was not allowed to treat Jayalalithaa when she was in Apollo, the senior counsel said "the panel was appointed only to supervise and monitor, not to treat."
He sought to know on what basis they had arrived at such an opinion "when they say they have not even examined Jayalalithaa and one of them is even not a doctor, but only a biochemist."