The suburban district consumer redressal forum on Tuesday held a Malad-based medical practitioner, Dr Ramesh Tiwari, guilty of failing to provide the required post-surgery services to one of his patients, which resulted in the amputation of four fingers of the complainant.
The forum directed the doctor to pay Rs8,70,000 to the complainant by July 31.
Sajan Bhaskaran, who is originally from Kerala, works as an electrician in Mumbai. Bhaskaran had met with an accident on January 30, 2004. "Immediately after the incident, he was admitted in Dr Tiwari's Evershine Orthosurgical Hospital. The doctor performed a surgery on the complainant's left hand and later applied plaster on it," reads the forum's order copy.
The order copy also states that after the doctor had performed surgery on Bhaskaran's hand, he apparently failed to attend to him for the next two days. "The doctor visited the complainant only on February 2, 2004, which was two days after the surgery. However, when Dr Tiwari checked the complainant's condition, he realised that his fingertips turning black. The complainant claimed that he was immediately discharged from the hospital on the grounds that Dr Tiwari was unable to give treatment as there was an infection in the operated area."
Bhaskaran had then approached some other private hospitals but they refused to get him admitted. He then went to KEM Hospital. The complainant again underwent a surgery, where his cut veins were rejoined by transplanting veins from his left leg.
Bhaskarn then spent some time in Kerala. He realised that there was pus formation at his finger tips and swelling on his palm. He called up a medical practitioner in KEM who asked him to get admitted in a hospital in Kerala. Once admitted, he was informed that his four fingers will have to be amputated. His thumb, point finger, ring finger and small finger were amputated.
Dr Tiwari, however, denied the allegation and claimed that this was the tactic adopted by the complainant to extract money. The doctor further claimed that he had informed the complainant and his relatives to shift him to some other hospital for further treatment, but his relatives refused to do so. Tiwari also claimed that there was no negligence on his part, but the relatives were trying to take advantage of their own wrong and mistakes.
The forum, after going through the evidence, held that the doctor had failed to give the required post-surgery treatment, leading to a major loss to the complainant. Hence, the forum penalised the doctor for his negligence.
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