DNA
 
Mumbai, Feb 10: For a month, Madhusudan Nawar fought for his life in hospital. Now, his brother Pramod is fighting for the body.

Pramod sued the LH Hiranandani Hospital in Powai on Friday after it refused to hand over his brother’s body for non-clearance of bills worth Rs 4.51 lac.

In his petition, Pramod said hospital authorities cannot withhold the body for non-payment of bills and he believes it was medical negligence that caused his brother’s death on Thursday. Refusal to release the body amounts to extortion, he said.

The matter was placed urgently before a division bench of Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice Anup Mohta of the Bombay high court. “How can the hospital not release the body?” the judges asked.

Counsel Neel Gawankar said Pramod registered a complaint with the Powai police at 11:30 pm on Thursday, but the officers told him that they will only look into the matter the next morning. Observing that a complaint had been filed, the bench ordered police to take the body into custody, have a post-mortem conducted, and keep the body in a government morgue till Monday, when the report has to be submitted to the court.

Madhusudan suffered a heart attack on January 9 and was admitted to Sanjeevani Hospital in Bhandup. Doctors there suggested that he be shifted to Hiranandani Hospital.

He was admitted on January 10 and angiography and angioplasty were performed on him.

From January 13 to February 6 he was treated for a lung infection. Then the family was told he had kidney failure. The cost of treatment escalated to Rs 7.44 lac of which the patient’s family paid Rs 3.33 lac.

Pramod, a BMC employee, said, “When my brother was alive people would have given me financial aid to save him. Now that he’s dead nobody will help me.”

Hospital CEO Sujit Chatterjee said, “The patient was in serious condition when he was admitted. We had explained the procedure as well as expenditure involved to the family.”

Chatterjee said the hospital offered the family a concession for about Rs 1.70 lac and could negotiate further. “There is no question of the body not being given to them,” he said. “All we said was the body would be kept in our morgue and they could come next morning to settle the issue.”

Last year, Bombay Hospital, which had detained a 12-year-old cancer patient, Aayushi Sharma, for over two months for non-payment of bills, wrote off the remainder of about Rs 2 lac. Noting that the larger issue of whether a hospital can detain a patient for non-clearance of bills remains undecided, the court ordered the Association of Hospitals to be made party to the case. The case is pending.