A local court in Delhi, on Tuesday, criticized the Delhi Police for the ‘casual manner’ in which it submitted a status report in the case of deaths of patients infected with COVID-19 at the Jaipur Golden Hospital due to oxygen shortages. The comments were made by the court while hearing a petition calling for a First Investigation Report(FIR) to be filed against the management of Jaipur Golden Hospital.
According to news agency PTI, the Metropolitan Magistrate Vivek Beniwal said on Tuesday that the Investigating Officer(IO) had not revealed the steps taken after he was asked to file a status report.
Criticizing Delhi Police for filing the report in a casual way, the court gave the final opportunity to the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) for filing the status report. It also warned that action would be taken in accordance with law if the report is not submitted.
The local court was hearing the plea of six family members of the hospital victims who called for action to be taken against the management of Jaipur Golden Hospital for its ‘rash negligence’. The members said in their petition that the hospital had murdered the patients, committed fraud, and threatened them. With oxygen shortage being alleged as the cause of the patient’s deaths, the petitioners argued that the hospital management should not have admitted more patients and should have discharged existing patients if that was the case.
They called the hospital’s act of not giving information about low oxygen supply “culpable homicide”. The petition added that the police had neither arrested the hospital management and nor commissioned an inquiry. Notably, the hospital had earlier admitted to the Delhi High Court that about 25 patients had died in the hospital in April 2021 due to a shortage of oxygen.