Kolkata: The Problems for Kolkata based AMRI Hospital are neverending. After being gutted to fire last year, it has now been asked to pay Rs 5.96 Crores in compensation to an Indian American, whose wife was died due to its alleged negligence in 1998.
The verdict was passed by a bench of justices S J Mukhopadhaya and V Gopala Gowda, in a case filed by Ohio based Dr. Kunal Saha.
Reports suggest that  Saha’s wife, Anuradha, had come to Kolkata in March 1998 on a summer vacation. She complained of skin rashes on April 25 and consulted Dr Sukumar Mukherjee, who, without prescribing any medicine, simply asked her to take rest.
As rashes reappeared more aggressively on May 7, 1998, Mukherjee prescribed Depomedrol injection 80 mg twice daily, a step which was later faulted by experts at the apex court.
After administration of the injection, Anuradha’s condition deteriorated rapidly following which she had to be admitted at AMRI on May 11 under Mukherjee’s supervision. Later she was shifted to the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai, where she died from the TEN (Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis) syndrome.
Following his wife’s death, Kunal launched his fight against medical negligence. He later formed People for Better Treatment (PBT) to make his crusade into a mass movement and filed cases against three doctors and the AMRI hospital,
In 2009, the SC found the AMRI hospital guilty of medical negligence and referred the case to the National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission (NCDRC), which had fixed the compensation amount to Rs. 1.7 crore.
The NCDRC asked three Kolkata doctors and the AMRI to share the compensation amount. The deceased’s husband, however, claimed that the compensation amount, along with interest since 1998, should be Rs. 200 crore and moved the SC.
On Thursday, the apex court decided on his plea and enhanced the compensation to Rs. 5.96 crore.
The court said out of the total compensation amount, Dr Balram Prasad and Dr Sukumar Mukherjee will pay Rs. 10 lakh each and Dr Baidyanath Halder will have to pay Rs. 5 lakh to Saha within eight weeks.
The rest of the amount, along with the interest, will be paid by the hospital, the apex court said, adding that a compliance report be filed before it after the payment of the compensation amount.
Kunal Saha says that he has already pledged to donate the entire amount to People for Better Treatment, a voluntary group set up by him in Kolkata to fight against medical negligence and corruption in medical field.
In the past one decade, Saha has fought against corruption in the Medical Council of India, West Bengal Medical Council, the judicial system and exposed a scam in HIV kits. It was because of his incessant campaign that former MCI chief Dr Ketan Desai was disallowed to take over as President of the World Medical Association and lost his license to practice as a doctor.