Mumbai: The single-judge bench of Bombay high court of Justice RM Joshi discharged three doctors attached to an In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinic in Bandra West who were booked for death of a minor girl who they were using as an egg donor. The teenaged girl (aged between 16 and 18 years) died on August 10, 2010, after donating eggs for the third time on August 8, 2010. The judge observed that there was no sufficient ground for proceeding against them.
The deceased teenager was working at a scrap godown and did not return home on August 7, 2010. So, the next day, her mother went and inquired with her employer, who asked her not to worry and assured her the teenager would return home safely. The minor girl returned home on August 9 but could not tell her mother where she was as, apparently, she was administered some substance through food which made her unconscious. Hours after returning home, she complained of pain in abdomen, and was taken to a local doctor. As the pain did not subside, she was taken to Rajawadi Hospital, where she was treated as an outdoor patient. As her condition deteriorated, the girl was referred to a civic hospital but breathed her last on the way to the hospital.
The Sakinaka police registered an offence after the post-mortem report revealed that the minor had multiple injuries and injection marks on her body. The police probe revealed that the teenager was donating eggs at a fertility clinic. The police also found out that though the regulations in place at the relevant time prohibited use of minor girls as egg donors, the victim had donated eggs thrice – on October 22, 2009, February 15, 2010, and on August 8, 2010 (the day she had gone missing).
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The police booked the doctors who ran the fertility clinic, and other doctors who performed the procedures, holding them responsible for the girl’s death by negligence. Three of the doctors had moved the high court last year, challenging the session’s court order of May 25, 2023 refusing to discharge them in the case. The high court on August 9, 2024, accepted the doctors’ claim that they cannot be held responsible for negligence, as they were not involved in the last egg removal – which was perceived to be the cause of death of the girl. The single-judge bench noted that after the girl’s death, medical opinion was sought about the cause of her death and negligence, if any, and a committee of doctors from Grant Medical College had opined that it was a case of medical negligence. The court also noted that the opinion clarified that there was no evidence of anesthetic complications or trauma to internal organs, which could have caused death. “It is thus clear that insofar as present applicants are concerned, they cannot be held responsible for the admission of under-aged patient to the hospital for performance of the procedure,” said the court. “It cannot be said there was any medical negligence on their part which has resulted in causing the unfortunate death of the deceased,” said the judge, and discharged them.
