Vikas,Vishal manipulated hospital visits to stay out:HC

Vikas Yadav and his cousin Vishal "manipulated" hospital visits "to procure outings from jail" which "manifests a lack of remorse or regret", Delhi High Court today said while awarding them an enhanced life term of 30 years each.
A bench of justices Gita Mittal and J R Midha said the two convicts "utilised the shield of hospital visits" in connivance with jail authorities as well as the doctors who were treating them, to "avoid undergoing the imprisonment" awarded to them.
"It is therefore, obvious that Vikas Yadav and Vishal Yadav have utilized the shield of the hospital visits and stays in connivance with jail authorities as well as doctors at the hospital which they visited or were admitted to.

"They manipulated the systems deliberately and knowingly with impunity without any respect for law or authority, sure and confident that their unholy and illegal acts would go undetected and they could avoid undergoing the imprisonment awarded to them, in any sense," the bench said.
The court also took note of the Rs 20,77,721 "burden borne by the taxpayer" on the security provided to the two during their visits to hospitals, and said the "figures are no measure of the colossal waste of valuable manpower and scarce human resources as the police personnel are constantly required for discharging critical policing duties".

It also took note of the treatment provided to them during their numerous visits - 98 for Vikas and 105 for Vishal - as well as the medication prescribed and said it did not appear that either of them were afflicted by the ailments for which they were taken to hospital.
It also said that none of the ailments, including tuberculosis, which the two convicts claimed to have suffered during the incarceration, required them to be taken to tertiary health care centres like AIIMS and Batra when the same could be provided in the prison or nearby Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital.

The court also said,"Judicial notice requires to be taken of the long line of critically ill patients waiting to be admitted to the AIIMS for treatment in any ward. And yet a healthy prisoner has been permitted to occupy and room for twenty six days thereby enabling him to avoid the prison.