SOCIAL JURIST A CIVIL RIGHTS GROUP Vs. UOI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) More than seven years after she died in a UK hospital, baby Sunaina"s dead body is still waiting in a local mortuary for a dignified cremation or burial in keeping with the faith in which she was born. The parents of the unfortunate child who passed away at a tender age of five months in the very same hospital where she was born have, it appears, fought a long and grim battle in the United Kingdom to prove their charge that the child died on account of medical negligence of the doctors working in the hospital. Two postmortems conducted in UK in quick succession certified the immediate cause of death to be extensive ischaemic myocardial necrosis, probably due to congenital heart anomaly. According to the report, the end came because of a heart failure and chronic lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. The first report based on the postmortem examination held on 30th October, 2000 gave the final summary of lesions and the cause of death as under :

(2.) A second report conducted at the request of detective superintendent Gibson by the Department of Forensic Medicine and Science, University of Glasgow gave the cause of death to be cardiorespiratory failure resulting from chronic lung disease and congenital heart and cerebral abnormalities. The report of Dr. Peter Vanezis, Department of Forensic Medicine and Science in the University of Glasgow reported the cause of death as under :

(3.) The conclusions drawn by the doctors conducting the post mortem did not, it appears, satisfy the parents of the child who instituted proceedings in UK in an attempt to establish that the child had died on account of medical negligence and not on account of any congenital or other disease. At the forefront in that campaign stood Ms. Neelu Chaudhari, a pharmacist by profession and an aunt of the deceased child who testified that the death was on account of the clinical negligence on the part of the doctors in the hospital who failed to give to the child medical and nursing care required by her, leading to her death by ranitidine overdoses and lethal potassium chloride poisoning. A copy of what is described as an expert report and witness statement filed by the petitioner as Annexure-H draws the following conclusion as to the cause of death of Baby Sunaina.