Doctor sends defamation notice to patient’s hubby for FB posts

KOLKATA: In a case of the boot being on the other foot, a neurosurgeon has sent a legal notice to the husband of a patient claiming Rs 10 crore in damages unless he apologises for alleged defamatory posts made on social networking sites.
The doctor, neurosurgeon Sujoy Sanyal, has given the patient’s husband, Nabendu Biswas, seven days to publish apologies in English, Hindi and Bengali dailies, failing which he would take further legal action. Biswas acknowledged receipt of the notice dated August 9. His wife, Bhanumati Biswas, 55, passed away at the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) on Saturday morning.

Bhanumati, a Ranaghat resident, had undergone a kidney transplant at RTIICS in 2017. On June 26 this year, she returned to the hospital after developing fever. A nephrologist later told Biswas that his wife had developed meningitis and referred her to a neurologist, who in turn referred her to Sanyal, senior consultant neurosurgeon-cumneurointerventionist at RTIICS.

‘Controversial posts on FB are liable to be challenged’

According to Nabendu Biswas’s social media posts on August 6, neurosurgeon Sanyal told him that a ‘VP shunt’ procedure would be required to save his wife’s life. She underwent the surgery on July 26 but never recovered, Biswas claimed in his Facebook and WhatsApp posts. He accused the doctors, including Sanyal, of not being able to diagnose his wife’s ailment even after several weeks.

Sanyal, however, claimed otherwise. In his notice, sent through Calcutta High Court lawyer Phiroze Edulji, he claimed that the patient was referred to him on July 24 after being on ventilator in the CCU. A day later, he met Biswas and his son and explained to them that the patient’s life could be saved by using a ‘shunt’ to create an alternate route for the water accumulated in the brain to the abdominal cavity.

The doctor claimed that he explained to the father-son duo that the patient ran the risk of sepsis, prolonged ventilation and even death as she was on immunosuppressants since the kidney transplant, and that the ultimate prognosis would also depend on whether the meningitis was medically treatable. They were also informed that there was risk of death or the shunt getting blocked or infected. Only after that did the patient’s son sign the consent form, the doctor said in the notice.

According to Sanyal, the patient recovered consciousness and was taken off the ventilator on July 27 and remained in that condition till July 29. The notice says that Biswas didn’t mention in his posts about being counselled by the doctor or that his wife regained consciousness. Neither did he mention that tests on the brain water established tuberculosis meningitis, which had nothing to do with the ‘VP shunt’ procedure done. The notice also says that Biswas did not mention in his posts that X-rays established that his wife had developed severe chest infections on July 30 or that both he and his son were counselled by several doctors of the hospital that his wife’s critical condition was due to severe chest infection and sepsis.

“I have received the notice and will take a decision on what to do on Monday,” Biswas said.

According to senior advocate Sekhar Basu, controversial posts or comments on Facebook or similar social networking sites are liable to be challenged. “Under the Indian Penal Code, a person charged with defamation has to make or publish a statement. Facebook is a publication and a statement on it can be defamatory,” he said.