Mid-Day:
Mumbai: Tuesday, September 17, 2019.
It
has been almost one-and-half-years 32-year-old Rajesh Maru died after being
sucked into an MRI machine at Nair Hospital, but it seems the Brihanmumbai
Municipal Corporation (BMC) is still reluctant to make the incident's inquiry
report public. Even after an order from the chief information officer (CIO),
Nair Hospital refuses to provide the report to an activist in clear violation
of the Right to Information Act, 2005. While in a response to the RTI request
the hospital said that the report had confidential details, which if made
public would affect the outcome of the probe, the dean says the hospital
doesn't even possess the report.
Last
year in January Maru died when he went to the hospital to visit a relative who
was admitted there. The moment he entered the MRI test room with an oxygen
cylinder, he got sucked into the machine.
Following
this, an inquiry committee was formed which conducted an investigation and
submitted the final report to former Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta.
The
probe revealed that a ward boy and a female attendant were responsible for the
incident, as they did not follow proper safety rules. They should have stopped
Maru from going inside the room.
RTI
activist Chetan Kothari, who filed the request on June 6, said, "An
innocent person lost his life due to BMC's negligence. People have the right to
know what the report has. Also, the hospital can't deny me the report despite
the CIO's order. This is in violation of the Act."
In
response to the RTI query the hospital said, "The investigation report
contains confidential information and charges are yet to be framed against
those found guilty. So, revealing such details under the RTI Act can affect the
probe's outcome. Hence, under Section 8 of the Act, the report can't be
provided."
However,
dean of the hospital, Dr Ramesh Bharmal said, "The BMC did the
investigation, not us. We don't even have the report to respond to the RTI
query. The RTI should be filed at the civic headquarters."
Responding
to this, Kothari said, "As per the RTI rules, if a filed query doesn't
belong to a specific department, it is their responsibility to forward it to
the authority concerned. They can't just wash off their hands."
Meanwhile,
Maru's brother-in-law, Harish Solanki, said, "The BMC doesn't want to give
the report as they are trying to hide some information and save their
officials. They know it was their fault. That is why when we asked for the
report, they refused to give it to us as well."
Even
after repeated attempts to call Additional Commissioner Dr Ashwini Joshi, he
remained unavailable for comment.
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