Death Of Patients Due To Oxygen Shortage : Karnataka High Court Directs Seizure Of Hospital Records Relating To Oxygen Supply

A division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Aravind Kumar has also directed the Chief Secretary to immediately seize all records pertaining to supply of oxygen available with the Deputy Commissioner at Chamarajnagar and records maintained by the office of Deputy Commissioner at Mysuru.

Further, the Registrar judicial is directed to supply the report prepared by the Chairman of District Legal Services Authority (Chamarajnagar) to the Advocate General.

The direction followed after Advocate General Prabhuling K Navadgi informed the court that "As regard Chamrajnagar incident is concerned. Yesterday the cabinet took cognizance of your lordships order, which prima facie indicated that Judicial Inquiry is necessary. They have passed an order for constituting a Commission of Inquiry with a request to the Honourable Judge to complete the inquiry within a period of one month, the outer limit."

The bench took exception to it and said "The choice of the judge you should leave it to the high court. Government cannot decide on the choice of a judge." It added "You cannot pre-judge the matter like this."

"We are constrained to observe that the state govt has already made a choice of a retired judge who will head the commission. Proprietary demanded that the state should have come before the court before appointing commissioner."

After passing the order the bench orally said "Now Mr Advocate General you can either consider modifying the order or else we will tell you what we propose to do. The Committee appointed by the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority is headed by a retired judge and we propose to forward the records to him and ask him to inquire into the matter."

The Advocate General said he would address the court at 2.30 pm on the subject and noted that "We just acted upon the suggestion made by the court we did not intend to overreach the court's observations or pre-judge the matter."