The state consumer commission in Maharashtra has instructed a civic-run hospital in Navi Mumbai and a Chembur-based hospital to pay over Rs 15 lakh compensation to a woman whose husband died nine years before due to gross "medical negligence".

The Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission mentioned that one hospital could not recognize the illness of her husband and the other hospital did not provide proper medical treatment to the patient.

The victim, Datta Sherkhane, 40, was an employee of BPCL and was treated for malaria instead of myocarditis (a heart ailment) at the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation Hospital in 2010, according to his wife Swati. She later shifted her husband to Chembur-based Sushrut Hospital, where she claimed that there was a delay in treatment which lead to her husbands death.

Swati moved the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission seeking compensation on account of "medical negligence" in treatment of her husband in 2011.

In her complaint, Swati Sherkhane said, on May 10, 2010, she took her husband to the civic hospital as he was feeling very uneasy and feverish. At the hospital, he was given anti- malaria drugs and soon after returning home, he developed chest pain, headache and nausea. Datta Sherkhane was then admitted to the hospital where medical tests were carried out on him, she said this in her petition to the commission.

Swati alleged that despite his ECG suggesting critical cardiac abnormality, doctors continued the malaria treatment. As she could find no improvement in his health, took her husband to the Chembur hospital on May 11, 2010. She said even though her husband was suffering from a heart disease, neither a 2D ECHO test was conducted nor a cardiologist was summoned by the hospital. She said cardiologists were called only the next day by when her husband’s condition had deteriorated. Also, the cardiologists were not able to come to the hospital in time and Datta Sherkhane died after suffering a cardiac arrest the same afternoon.

After scrutiny of details and argument placed on record, the commission found the two hospitals, along with their doctors, administrators and medical superintendents were guilty of "negligence of duty". The commission directed them to pay a compensation of Rs 15 lakh with an interest of 9 per cent per annum from the date of Datta Sherkhanes death to his wife. The panel also told the hospitals to pay her Rs 15,000 towards the cost of lawsuit.