Non-use of donor's body; HC asks Centre, AIIMS to reply

Delhi High Court today sought responses from Centre and others after taking note of a letter alleging that due to procedural delays the body of a cadaver woman donor could not be utilised by the Organ Retrieval and Banking Organisation (ORBO) of the AIIMS here.
A bench headed by Acting Chief Justice B D Ahmed treated the letter of V K Gupta, an official working with NTPC, as a PIL and said, "due to catch-22 situation" the body of Gupta's sister late Sushila Gupta could not be utilised by ORBO.
Besides the Health Ministry and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the court also issued notices to Delhi government and the city police saying that the committee of judges, which decided to treat the letter as a PIL, felt that regulations can be framed to ensure that such incidents do not recur.

Referring to the letter, the bench, also comprising Justice Siddharth Mridul, said Gupta had already registered herself with ORBO in AIIMS pledging her body for "donation or research work" and she died on March 10, 2012.
However, the authorities at AIIMS asked the brother of the cadaver woman donor to get no objection certificate (NoC) from Delhi Police, the court said.
Police, in turn, pressed for postmortem examination before granting NoC and by the time NoC was given, the cadaver body was rendered useless, it said.
"This is very sad," the bench said and appointed advocate Ajay Verma as an amicus curiae to assist the court.

It asked the counsel for the Centre and others to be ready with their submission on April 30 when it will take up the case.