New Delhi: The Supreme Court has held that doctors cannot be “unnecessarily harassed” by patients or their claimants to extract compensation for death or disability due to alleged medical negligence.
A bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and H S Bedi said it was the bounden duty of the society to ensure that doctors peform their duties without apprehension of malicious prosecution though the interests of the patients should be paramount.
“It is our bounden duty and obligation of the civil society to ensure that the medical professionals are not unnecessarily harassed or humiliated so that they can perform their professional duties without fear and apprehension.
“The medical practitioners at times also have to be saved from such a class of complainants who use criminal process as a tool for pressurizing the medical professionals/hospitals, particularly private hospitals or clinics, for extracting uncalled for compensation. Such malicious proceedings deserve to be discarded against the medical practitioners,” Justices Bhandari writing the judgement said.
The apex court made the remarks while dismissing the Rs 45-lakh compensatiion claim of Kusum Latha, widow of R K Sharma, Senior Operations Manager in Indian Oil Corporation`s Marketing Division who, according to the claimants, died due
to negligence committed by the doctors of Batra Hospital and Medical Research Centre.
-PTI
