Nasim Shah, 49, is a somewhat happy woman today. After her sustained two-year battle to get justice for her son who died in an alleged botched-up medical procedure, the Bombay High Court has finally directed the Mumbai Police to record her statement about her son’s death. Three decades after her husband’s disappearance during the 1992 riots following the Babri Masjid demolition, and her struggle to manage a family of three — two sons and herself by doing odd jobs, including teaching Arabic to neighbourhood kids — things had started to look up for Nasim during late 2000s. [related-post] Her elder son Salman, an ambitious youngster in his early twenties, had grown up seeing his mother’s struggle to make the family’s ends meet. And his job of a junior artiste in the television industry had his single mother think that life would not be shrouded by “dark clouds” again. Sustainability, however, was short lived in their tiny house in a crammed lane in Govandi, where people and houses, both jostle for space. The family sees April 8, 2014, as the onset of its endless misery: Salman was on his way from a shoot in Vasai when a tempo carrier rammed into the rear of his bike. During the hearing of the case, Nasim’s lawyer Misbah Solkar informed the Bench of Justice Naresh Patil and Justice A M Badar that Salman had suffered a fracture in the said accident. On the advice of a local doctor at the spot of the accident, her petition says, Salman was rushed to Millennium Hospital in Govandi. The mother alleges that the hospital demanded Rs 75,000 before admitting Salman. While the surgery of nailing Salman’s right femur was on, electricity went off in the operation theatre for about four hours. “On enquiry with the doctors, the petitioner was informed that the operation was carried out using torch lights, and instead of keeping him the ICU, he was shifted to the general ward in unhygienic conditions,” Solkar argued. Nasim claims that soon after her son was shifted to the general ward, Salman’s health deteriorated considerably due to heavy loss of blood. “Despite paying full, and for an AC room, the doctors kept him in the general ward,” asserted Solkar, adding that Salman was shifted out to another hospital, Sai Hospital, without his mother’s consent as well. Upon taking him there, doctors at Sai Hospital told the family that Salman had developed septicaemia or blood poisoning. Nasim shelled out thousands of rupees towards the treatment including blood bags in vain, says the petition. After Salman’s death on April 17 that year, Nasim’s took up the fight to bring the guilty to book. She approached the local police station but was directed register a complaint of accident in the police station, under whose jurisdiction the accident took place. Subsequently, the lawyers argued that instead of registering an FIR against the guilty doctors, the police registered an FIR under provision of an accident. Tired of running from pillar to post demanding justice, Nasim decided to write letters to the chief minister, the health minister, the Medical Council of India as also the police commissioner and the BMC. Series of letter and reminders led to formation of a committee of four doctors set up by the J J Hospital dean to look into Salman’s death. “But due to unavailability of required documents, the team could not arrive at any finding,” the petition says. Nasim’s diminishing trust in the system was inevitable. She therefore moved the High Court demanding the statuses of action taken by various state agencies.
