Chennai, The Madras High Court on Thursday refused to interfere in the probe by Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission of Inquiry probing the circumstances that led to the death of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in December 2016.
Rejecting a petition filed by Apollo Hospitals, where she was hospitalised for 75 days till her death, seeking to set up a 21-member medical team to go into the correctness of treatment provided to her, Division Bench comprising Justices R Subbiah and Krishnan Ramaswamy said it was refraining from interfering in the proceedings of the Inquiry Commission as 90 per cent of the inquiry has been completed.
The Bench said since the commission had cast aspersions against the hospital, in our opinion, that by itself, hitherto would not vitiate the inquiry proceedings.
‘We hope and trust that the commission will confine its inquiry strictly within the scope and ambit of the Terms of Reference made by the government’, the Bench said.
The Apollo hospitals, in its plea contended that Ms Jayalalithaa was treated by a medical team that consisted of highly qualified and specialist doctors who had provided optimum and effective treatment.
It said at no point of time during her hospitalisation or immediately after her death, any concerns were raised about the efficacy of the treatment provided to her.
In fact, the line of treatment was consistently validated by doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and other external specialists. However, the Commission of Inquiry was constituted about nine months after her death, it said.
The hospital urged the Court to appoint an independent medical board comprising specialist doctors, not associated with the State government, to probe issues pertaining to treatment provided to Jayalalithaa if the court thought that the terms of reference of the Commission of Inquiry would necessitate a probe into the treatment provided to her.
The reports of the medical board could be placed before the High Court in a time-bound manner, the hospital said.
The commission was constituted to inquire into the circumstances and situation leading to the hospitalisation of Ms Jayalalithaa on September 22 and subsequent treatment provided till her unfortunate death on December 5, 2016 as per the terms of reference issued to the commission.