Kolkata, Jan 28 A single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Tuesday, granted protection against coercive police action to suspended junior doctor Pallabi Bandopadhyay in the expired saline case in which a woman and a new-born died early this month.
The state government’s decision to suspend the 12 doctors invited strong criticisms from various sections of the society as information surfaced that the deaths of the woman and the new-born were caused due to alleged administration of “expired” Ringer’s Lactate supplied by blacklisted entity Paschim Banga Pharmaceuticals Private Limited.
Besides suspending the two doctors the state government also ordered a parallel probe in the matter, one by a team of experts from the state health department and the second by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of West Bengal Police.
On January 22, Bandopadhyay approached the Calcutta High Court’s single judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh accusing CID of “doing excesses” within the hospital in the name of its parallel probe in the matter.
On Tuesday Justice Ghosh directed the CID not to adopt any coercive action including arrest in the matter against Bandopadhyay. However, at the same time, Justice Ghosh had directed Bandopadhyay to extend full cooperation to the authorities concerned in the probe process.
Earlier this month five women had fallen sick at the hospital allegedly after being administered the expired Ringer’s Lactate. First Mamoni Ruidas, one of the five women, and thereafter the newborn of Rekha Shaw, another among the five women, also died.
When the state was on the boil over allegations of administration of the expired Ringer’s Lactate supplied by the blacklisted entity, the Chief Minister at a press conference said the negligence of the attending doctors was the reason behind the mishaps and also announced the suspension of the 12 doctors.
The Chief Minister gave a clean chit to the said entity and claimed that had it been the case then there would have been similar mishap reports from other state-run hospitals where Ringer’s Lactate supplied by the same entity was being administered.
However, recently a team of clinical experts submitted a report not ruling out the possibility of an adverse impact of injection of essential liquids like Ringers’ Lactate and oxytocin triggering the mishaps.
The committee also said that the batch of Ringers’ Lactate and oxytocin has already been forwarded for more sophisticated clinical examination. The committee, sources added, has also advised that till the report on this count arrives it is advisable to avoid the use of such clinical liquids of the same batch.
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