New Delhi: A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed before the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Centre and all state governments to frame statutory rules for prosecuting cases of criminal medical negligence, as mandated by the apex court nearly two decades ago in the landmark Jacob Mathew judgment, according to an IANS report.
The petition flagged a "20-year-long inaction" by the authorities despite directions issued by the Supreme Court on August 5, 2005, requiring the Union and state governments to frame statutory rules or executive instructions governing the prosecution of doctors in criminal negligence cases.
Terming the delay “disheartening and disappointing”, the petition stated that “the nation has since been waiting for more than 20 years” for the mandatory rules, which “are yet to be framed and notified even after two decades of the Jacob Mathew judgment”.
The plea questioned the allegedly biased inquiry system, where allegations of medical negligence are assessed by doctor-dominated committees.
"In the absence of Statutory Rules or Executive Instructions as required to be framed in compliance of Jacob Mathew judgement and under the prevailing system of the Inquiry Committees comprising of mostly the doctors only, the medical inquiry reports, in many cases, do not happen to be unbiased,” the PIL stated, adding that “several innocent human beings become victim of torturous, agonising, miserable, ignoble and often butchering deaths in hospitals each year in our country, caused due to gross medical negligence”.
The petition said that patients' families are left “absolutely helpless”, as “there remains hardly any hope of justice for the victims of gross medical negligence in the situation of ‘doctors judging doctors’ obviously favouring their fraternity”.
It referred to an RTI reply from the National Medical Commission (NMC), confirming that “no such guidelines have been framed” and that the process “is under process”.
Further, the petition relied on the 73rd Parliamentary Standing Committee Report (2013), which recorded that medical professionals probing negligence cases are “very lenient towards their colleagues” and that “none of them is willing to testify another doctor as negligent”, resulting in “almost negligible” prosecution rates.