24 September 2010
By Vijay V Singh
Mumbai, India
A ‘post–mortem’ doctor of a government–run hospital was sentenced to a year in jail on Tuesday for demanding Rs 1 lakh from a private doctor in 2004 to favour her in a case.
The convicted doctor, Manohar Shivsharan, was attached to the mortuary of Cooper Hospital and had demanded money from the private doctor whose patient died during an operation. The anti–corruption bureau (ACB) had caught Shivsharan red–handed while accepting Rs 20,000 from the private doctor. Sessions court judge M W Chandwani found Shivsharan guilty in the case.
According to ACB officials, a private doctor, Devidas Sheregar, approached them in April 2004, saying that Shivsharan was demanding Rs 1 lakh from his wife, who too was a doctor at a Jogeshwaribased hospital.
The wife had operated on a woman, Parvati Singh, at Linkway Nursing Home and the victim’s condition deteriorated after the surgery. Singh was rushed to BSES Hospital at Andheri (west) where she died the following day.
The D N Nagar police registered an accidental death case and sent the body for a post–mortem to Cooper Hospital. Shivsharan conducted a post–mortem of the deceased and told Sheregar that Parvati died due to negligence. He prepared a postmortem note, mentioning the cause of death as ‘improper surgery’ and demanded Rs 1 lakh from Sheregar to favour his wife in the case.
Sheregar negotiated with Shivsharan, who agreed to change the post–mortem report in exchange for Rs 40,000. He called Sheregar with the first installment of Rs 20,000 to his office.
Sheregar decided to teach him a lesson and reported the matter to the ACB, providing them with all the details.
Investigating officer of the case and retired assistant commissioner of police Vilas Tupe said, ‘’We verified the facts and decided to trap Shivsharan. He accepted money before our man and tore the postmortem report into pieces. He then prepared a new post–mortem note stating that the cause of death was pending. We caught him redhanded and recovered the torn paper as evidence.’’
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