KIMS declares accident victim dead, relatives claim he was alive

HUBBALLI: Family members of a road accident victim on Monday alleged that the KIMS hospital authorities had wrongfully declared a 24-year-old man dead and kept the body in a freezer in the mortuary for seven hours when he was alive. Twenty-four-year-old Praveen Mule, a resident of Lohia Nagar, met with an accident in the wee hours of Monday and was brought to the emergency unit of KIMS around 3am. He was declared brought dead by the duty doctors and the KIMS staff shifted the ‘body’ to mortuary. 

The relatives, however, claim that when Praveen’s body was removed from the freezer for postmortem, they found that his heart was still beating. They were irked with the fact that Praveen’s body was kept in a freezer for more than seven hours without checking if he was really dead. Soon, they took Praveen in an ambulance to a private hospital but the doctors here said that he was brought dead. 

A relative said, “When we found Praveen alive, we brought it to the notice of the doctors at KIMS but they did not respond. Later, we took Praveen to a private hospital but the doctors there said that had we taken him there half an hour early, he could have been saved.”Mule and four others were admitted to hospital after their car met with an accident near Hubballi-Dharwad bypass. However, the duty doctors at the hospital declared Praveen and his another friend Anil Renuke brought dead and started treating the other injured.