Chennai: Dr Geetha Rajarajan’s suicide by injecting a fatal drug once again highlights the easy access for medical professionals as well as common man to life-threatening drugs.
Doctors point out that there are different drugs that come under anaesthesia and that she had used anaesthetic drugs that could be administered through an intravenous (IV) line.
“Anything that’s taken overdose leads to complications. If IV anaesthetic drugs are given in large doses, they lead to death,” said an anaesthesiologist, adding no such drugs are available over-the-counter.
“It’s not easy to get such drugs and pharmacists never give unless they see prescription. As she was a doctor, buying such a drug would not have been that difficult,” said another doctor who did not want to be named.
A medical officer at the private hospital said Dr Geetha Rajarajan (41) had injected the fatal drug first to her son before killing herself.
Explaining anaesthetic drugs, anaesthesiologists say sodium pentothal is one such drug. It’s a rapid-onset, short-acting barbiturate general anesthetic and that barbiturates have also sedative, anxiolytic properties among others. “If sodium pentothal had been administered to the son, he would not have been alive,” the doctor said.
It may be recalled that the suicide came to light after medical officer Geetha’s father Sivagurunathan checked on the apartment after his daughter failed to answer his repeated phone calls.
When Sivagurunathan went home, both were lying unconscious. While the woman died, her son Siddharth has been admitted to a private hospital in Vadapalani and is undergoing treatment.
Doctors at government Royapettah hospital, where autopsy was performed, said only after one or two months, the forensic experts would be able to tell us about the drugs used in the suicide.
