A Delhi court Wednesday summoned a doctor in an alleged case of medical negligence during childbirth in 2018.
The Delhi-based doctor, gynaecologist Shakuntala Kumar, has been charged under Indian Penal Code Sections 336 (endangering life or personal safety of others), 338 (causing grievous hurt to any person) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender).
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Amardeep Kaur of Rohini Court said, “…owing to the negligence in calculation of expected date of delivery (EDD), Anshu Bala (the patient) was unnecessarily subjected to C-section delivery a month before the actual due date. It is a known medical norm that premature deliveries are associated with multiple risks.”
“…clearly the patient and her baby were healthy and suffered no complication through the entire pregnancy (but) were subjected to all those risks unnecessarily, due to the error on the part of the treating doctor,” she added.
“Dr Shakuntala Kumar, being ignorant of the error in calculating the EDD, administered oxytocin to her in order to induce labour,” further said ACJM Kaur, adding that the surgical procedure led to a scar rupture resulting in the baby being born severely asphyxiated, causing him to live in a vegetative state.
Bala’s kid passed away in December 2023. The court, however, noted that there was nothing to indicate that the continuous illnesses the child faced from birth were the actual cause of his death. “Thus, offence u/s 304 A (causing death by negligence) IPC cannot be said to be made out in the present case,” it said.
The Delhi Medical Council, in August 2019, had passed an order to remove the doctor’s name from the State Medical Register for a period of 90 days. Aggrieved by this, the doctor had filed an appeal before the Medical Council of India, seeking revocation of the directions.
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In June 2020, the ethics committee of the Medical Council of India found no prima facie case of medical negligence on the part of the doctor.
Thereafter, Dr Alok Kumar, the patient’s husband, moved the Delhi High Court, which stayed the order of the Medical Council of India exonerating Dr Shakuntala Kumar and her team of doctors from charges of medical negligence till further orders. This petition is still pending before the Delhi High Court.
On the other hand, the police in their final report had stated that the evidence on record was insufficient to impute any criminal liability on Dr Shakuntala Kumar and her team. It was against this that Alok Kumar had approached the trial court.
The court has listed the matter for April 16 next year.
