The Delhi high court has issued notices to the Centre and the Chief of Army Staff, among others, on a plea of a mechanic alleging that his wife succumbed to head injuries due to neglect at the Army hospital in New Delhi.
A bench, headed by Justice Gita Mittal, asked the defence ministry and others, including doctors of Delhi-based Army Hospital (Research and Referral), to respond to the plea by February 24.
The court also asked them to provide to Niranjan Singh, who lost his wife last year, a copy of the findings of the Court of Inquiry proceedings conducted by the army to ascertain the cause of her death. Singh, a havildar who is working as a vehicle mechanic at Army Headquarters here, had recently filed the petition seeking a direction to the Commanding Officer of his department to provide him the copy of inquiry proceedings.
Besides seeking “exemplary compensation” for the loss of his wife Kavita, he has also sought “a fair and impartial inquiry” into her death and subsequent “fabrication” of her postmortem report.
Kavita, a mother of two minors, fell on the floor on May 20 last year and was taken to the Army Hospital at Delhi Cantonment for treatment of head injuries. She later succumbed to injuries after alleged negligence.