Pune luxury car accident: Doctors arrested for manipulating blood samples of accused suspended

Maharashtra government sent the dean of Pune’s Sassoon General Hospital on compulsory leave following the opprobrium over the hospital’s doctors manipulating blood samples in the luxury car crash case

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.