In a day of rapid developments in the luxury car accident case, the Maharashtra government on May 29 sent the dean of Pune’s Sassoon General Hospital on compulsory leave following the opprobrium over the hospital’s doctors manipulating blood samples of the 17-year-old whose drunken driving had resulted in the two deaths in the city’s Kalyani Nagar area on May 19.
Dr. Vinayak Kale, dean of Sassoon, was sent on forced leave after a three-member panel formed by the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government to probe the case of blood sample manipulation submitted its report to the administration. The government order sending Dr. Kale on compulsory leave says that the dean did not take the matter of the tampering of blood samples of the accused minor by Sassoon’s doctors “seriously enough”.
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Dr. Chandrakant Mhaske, the dean of the Ahilya Devi Holkar Government Medical College, Baramati has been entrusted with additional charge of Sassoon General Hospital.
Dr. Kale’s ouster came hours after the former dean held a press conference to inform that the Sassoon Hospital administration had taken action against the arrested doctors - Ajay Taware, head of the State-run hospital’s forensic medicine department and chief medical officer Dr. Shrihari Halnor – as well as staff member Atul Ghatkamble.
Dr. Kale informed that the hospital administration had sent a proposal to the State government to suspend Dr. Taware immediately after his arrest, while the services of Dr. Halnor, who was employed on temporary basis, had been terminated on May 28 while Mr. Ghatkamble had been suspended.
This is the second time in barely a year that the Sassoon Hospital has suffered ignominy: last year, the then dean, Dr. Sanjiv Thakur was removed from his post following the escape of drug kingpin Lalit Patil from the hospital and following reports of a drug racket being run by hospital staff from within the premises.
Meanwhile, the accident case continued to engulf the political spectrum, with the name of MLA Sunil Tingre of the ruling Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) buzzing ever louder in connection with the matter.
Police sources said that the arrested father of the accused teenager, had called the MLA no less than 45 times following the accident on May 19 in a bid to get Mr. Tingre to ‘influence’ the course of the case.
It has already been established that Mr. Tingre, the legislator of the Vadgaon-Sheri (of which Kalyani Nagar is a part of) Assembly segment, was present at the Yerwada police station where the minor was brought after the crash.
Mr. Tingre has vehemently denied that he tried to exert pressure on the police. However, both the Opposition Congress and his own party have asked him to clear up the air on the matter.
Dr. Kale, while speaking to reporters earlier today, had spoken of Tingre’s connection with Dr. Ajay Taware, claiming that said Maharashtra Medical Education Minister Hasan Mushrif and Mr. Tingre had written a letter urging that Taware be made the head of Sassoon Hospital’s Forensic Medicine Department.
The investigation has also revealed arrested father had called Dr. Taware at least 14 times on May 19 following the accident, which subsequently led to the blood samples of the accused being swapped.
In a parallel development, the government’s Woman and Child Development Department formed a five-person committee to investigate whether the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) members followed correct legal procedures while granting bail to the teenager involved in the car accident.
A public furore had followed after the JJB had granted bail to the accused minor barely 15 hours after the incident, while asking him to write a 300-word essay on road accidents.
“The committee has been appointed and has started its work. A report is expected next week, and once the report is submitted, I will also make a remark on this and submit it to the Maharashtra government for further action,” Prashant Narnawre, Commissioner of the Women and Child Development Department in Pune, said.
