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In this case of 1998 , recently a very important order was passed by the Supreme Court of India in order to protect Medical Proffesionals from unneccessary lengthy trials. In this present case Santosh Rani who was expecting a baby in 1998 was admitted to Agnihotri Hospital run by appellants herein. On 15-11-1998 she has to go through a caesarian operation . Such operation was conducted and a male child was born. After the birth of a child , doctor felt a need of transfusion of blood to Santosh Rani for which they took blood of her husnband and his brother. Which was transfused to her after which the next morning at around 2:00 a.m she died . Thus her brother filed an FIR alleging the Dr Agnihotri of criminal negligence , also the main allegation on the doctor was that they did not attend the patient in the meanwhile of 2:00pm to 2:00 am . It is also neccessary to mention that in her postmortem report blood transfusion was not found to be the reason of her death. In this case Trial court relied upon the judgement passed in the case of Jacob Mathew vs State of Punjab and anr. and dispossed off the case on the application of the accused. The Additional Session Judge set aside the order of discharge and the order of Additional Session Judge was upheld in revision. In the mentioned Jacob Mathew's case(supra) it was held by the Supreme Court that death in case of medical negligence should be kept and understood differently than death in ordinary circumstances. In this case court already mentioned that medical proffessionals deal with patients on a very serious note and they find themselves sometimes in a situation where they are expected to take decisions which they might deem to be right but may not be true but they can not be held responsible of criminal medical negligence for the same unless negligence amounts to be of very high degree, whereas in this case in hand . The only fault which can be considered to be a mistake by the medical proffesionals is that they performed direct transfusion of blood from donor to the patient which was not complying the order of Chief Medical Officer but that does not come in the ambit of Medical Negligence as mentioned in the Jacob Mathew's Case (supra). Also court while concluding its judgement said that unless it is the negligence of such a nature which no medical proffesional would do in ordinary circumstances and in a prudent state of mind, medical proffesionals should not be dragged in trials of criminal negligence.
Thus court provided certain guidelines to be followed in such cases , one of which is "“The investigating officer should, before proceeding against the doctor accused of rash or negligent act or omission, obtain an independent and competent medical opinion preferably from a doctor in government service, qualified in that branch of medical practice who can normally be expected to give an impartial and unbiased opinion applying the Bolam test to the facts collected in the investigation.” Court also observed that in the present case no independence advise was taken. Therefore , restoring the order of the Trial Court , SC allowed the appeal and disposed off pending applications ,if any.
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