In 2003, when Mini Ganesh was returning to Wayanad from Bengaluru holding her six-year-old daughter’s hands tightly, she had decided that she would fight for justice till her last breath. Doctors at Bengaluru’s Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences had just predicted that Anjali, Mini’s daughter, would live only for a month or two. It came true, but the mother from Kerala’s Wayanad district wanted to fight for her daughter further legally as she was sure that Anjali would have lived for some more time if she had got treatment on time. Anjali was denied proper treatment by a doctor in Kozhikode whom Mini had consulted earlier.
In 2008, Mini got a favourable judgement from the Kerala Human Rights Commission against Dr PM Kutty, who worked in the Paediatrics department of the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital from 1982 to 2006. The Commission ordered a compensation of Rs 1.7 lakh for Mini and also forwarded the copy of the judgement to the Medical Council of India asking for appropriate action against the doctor. However, the doctor approached the Kerala High Court against the order, but last month the court dismissed his petition and upheld the Commission’s verdict.
Mini is relieved that after fighting for 18 years she is able to show a way for others who are in distress due to medical negligence, who lost their loved ones and who are tired of seeking justice.
Anjali was just two years old in 1998 when she was diagnosed with leukaemia. “Her father was working in the UAE. I was alone, taking her to chemotherapy, seeing her pain. She went through a lot in those three years of painful treatment. Finally in 2001, she was cured, no signs of cancer were found in the tests. She was slowly returning to normal life. She was brilliant and a happy kid,” Mini recalls.
But by the end of 2002, Anjali started having headaches. “She told me she could see coloured lights in her eyes and asked whether I got it too. She insisted that I hold her hand while walking as she would lose her balance. Though she had many colour pencils, she used only black-coloured pencils because she could see only black colour on white paper,” Mini says.
Mini immediately rushed Anjali to the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital. But it was not the previous doctor who saw her. The new doctor was PM Kutty. “I visited him many times saying my child has issues. He didn’t do any testing, instead he prescribed tablets for acidity and gas. When I repeatedly visited him, he referred us to the Ophthalmology department. Each time I was travelling from Wayanad to Kozhikode with my sick child. After a few months, they prescribed spectacles but her condition worsened, after which we visited some private hospitals. Dr Kutty did not like us getting a scan done at a private place,” she says.
“Though he was a government doctor, we’d been seeing him at his home paying consultation fees. We didn’t have the money to take her to a big hospital,” Mini adds. Finally, when she spotted visible problems in Anjali’s eyes, she took her to Bengaluru. There she was told that the cancer had spread to the child’s brain, that she would turn blind soon and lose her life.
“I still can’t believe how I survived that news. I was told that if it’d been identified earlier, she’d have lived for some more time. That’s why I decided to fight. I filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission and whoever else possible,” she says.
Anjali
It was a long legal battle, which Mini fought alone.
The accused doctor did not appear for any of the first hearings called by the Commission. “Before the final hearing, he called me and asked where Anjali was. He came only for the final hearing, in which he said Anjali was not his patient,” she recalls. The Human Rights Commission verdict came in 2008.
“When he filed an appeal in the High Court, I didn’t have much money to move the court. I pledged my ornaments and decided to fight again in 2011,” she adds. In the end, after many long years, the HC upheld the 2008 verdict of the Human Rights Commission on June 21, 2021. Though the doctor argued that the Commission had no right to order compensation or direct the Medical Council to take action, the HC directed that the Commission has all rights.
“I just wanted to give some hope and power to people who are suffering the same plight. Moreover, I could get some justice,” Mini says.