Don’t want hospitals to become potential lakshagrihas, says HC

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Thursday chided the state government and civic authorities over the recent fire incidents in hospitals and said that compliances should be undertaken in an expeditious manner. HC said that it did not want hospitals to turn into potential “lakshagriha (house of lacquer)” of the epic Mahabharata and that the safety of patients was of paramount importance.

“We do not want these hospitals to be potential jatugriha [lakshagriha]. These hospitals [which met with fire incidents] are all jatugrihas. This is not the way people should lose their lives,” HC observed.

In Mahabharata, the jatugriha (lakshagriha) was a house made of wax, through which Kauravas attempted to eliminate Pandavas during their exile period.

HC took a serious cognisance of the various fire incidents that took place in the past month across Maharashtra, including the recent one at Mumbra where at least four patients admitted in the intensive care unit of a private hospital died after a major fire broke out on Wednesday.

A division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice Girish Kulkarni, while hearing a PIL filed by lawyer Sneha Marjadi alleging mismanagement in treatment during the second wave of Covid-19 in Maharashtra, sought directions pertaining to shortage of Remdesivir and oxygen supply among other prayers. Hinting that it would be constrained to widen the scope of the PIL, the bench said, “You [civic authorities] have to conduct a fire audit of all hospitals and seek compliance earliest. If patients are being admitted in hospitals, their lives should be saved there.”

BMC’S counsel, senior advocate Anil Sakhare, informed HC that the civic authority had already initiated action pertaining to fire audit and compliances and would be in a position to give data and respond to the queries of the court in the next hearing on May 4.