Times of India: Nagpur: Friday, May 04, 2018.
Despite clear
directives from the Bombay High Court’s Aurangabad bench, the Maharashtra
government has failed to frame rules for issuing witness summons to
professional doctors to avoid unnecessary wastage of time. The startling
revelation came after the State Law and Judiciary Department expressed its
inability to provide information on any competent authority that would make
such rules.
The
department’s reply came in response to the queries sought under RTI Act by Dr
Indrajit Khandekar, professor and in-charge of Clinical Forensic Medicine Unit
(CFMU) at Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (MGIMS).
HC had
expressed the need to make such rules so that the medicos should be allowed to
perform their primary duty of attending the patient rather than wasting time in
the court as a witness. The directives were provided by a division bench
comprising justices Indira Jain and Arun Chaudhari while hearing a case of
Sanjay Shridhar Andhare versus State of Maharashtra on October 15, 2015.
The RTI query
was in pursuance to serious concerns expressed by the court over having a
strict framework for issuing summons to medical professionals. The judges had
observed that there are no fixed guidelines for issuing witness summons to
professional doctors in the criminal manual, since the medical professionals
have prior duty towards their patients. “Court hearings may not take place on
the date due to holidays or adjournments. It becomes immense wastage of time
for the doctors, who can’t attend their patients, when they are summoned as
witness in proceedings subject to such uncertainty,” they had observed.
Dr Khandekar
filed his queries on March 3 last year, which was transferred to the Home
Department after a week. After sitting on it for a year, the queries were later
transferred to the Public Health Department which eventually sent it back to
the Law and Judiciary. Ultimately, it too failed to furnish the information
about the competent authority framing rules for this purpose.
Dr Khandekar,
who has been fighting over this issue since 2016, has raised this matter before
chief minister Devendra Fadnavis demanding strict action over such reckless
behaviour from the state authorities.
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