Coimbatore: Two quack doctors, who had botched up a surgery leading to the death of a young patient, have been sentenced to seven years in jail by a Salem court. In a ruling that will send out a warning to quack doctors, the Salem Principal and Sessions Judge, D.Jayachandran slapped seven-year imprisonment on 62-year-old A.Babu alias Gulzar Basha and his daughter S.Asma, 38, who had performed the fatal surgery in March 2012.
Besides, Gulzar Basha has been awarded an additional one year sentence under section 15 (2) of the Indian Medical Council Act. Also, the father and daughter have been slapped with a fine of Rs 5000 each. The father and daughter duo, who claimed to be siddha doctors, were running a hospital at Udayarpalayam in Thammampatti. On March 19, 2012, they performed a surgery on 28-year-old N. Raju. The operation failed and the patient died.
His wife, Umamaheswari, lodged a complaint with the Thammampatti police station. A case of culpable homicide was registered under section 304 (2) of the IPC. Accepting the arguments of the prosecution lawyer, P.Dhanasekaran, the Judge held the father and daughter guilty of culpable homicide on Tuesday.
Decoy cop helps nab quack at Avadi
The city police on Tuesday arrested a 32-year-old quack near Avadi. The accused, Jaishankar, a native of Andhra Pradesh, ran a clinic in Avadi for the past eight months, the police said. He lived at 24th street, J.B. Estate, in Avadi, and was running a clinic from there. Investigations revealed that Jaishankar was only a class 10 dropout. After specific inputs and complaints, a constable of Avadi police pretended to be a patient and caught the man red-handed, a senior police official said.
The man had posed to the locals that he was a government doctor serving in the Rajiv Gandhi government general hospital near Central railway station and an assistant professor in the medical college while in reality he was only a class 10 dropout, Avadi inspector Vijay Shankar said. The police recovered a stethoscope and medical kits from him. The Avadi police registered a case and remanded him in custody. Further investigations are on.
