Bangladeshi civil servant lodges complaint against doc

She had come to India for surgery in August last year, hoping to get rid of her back pain of six years due to a slipped disk. Four months later, on last Tuesday, Lutfun Nahar, 34, a Bangladeshi Civil Service officer, lodged a complaint with the Delhi Police against her surgeon allegedly claiming for a wrongly done surgery. Rhythma Kaul reports.

She had come to India for surgery in August last year, hoping to get rid of her back pain of six years due to a slipped disk. Four months later, on last Tuesday, Lutfun Nahar, 34, a Bangladeshi Civil Service officer, lodged a complaint with the Delhi Police against her surgeon allegedly claiming for a wrongly done surgery.

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“On August 22, the surgery happened at Kalra Hospital in west Delhi and she was discharged on 26. The surgeon, Dr Sudeep Jain, said we could return home and the stitches could be removed locally,” said Nahar’s husband Mohammad Nazrul Islam.

The couple came to know about the wrong surgery after Nahar developed infection in the wound and fresh X-ray reports taken in Dhaka revealed she had problem in L5-S1 vertebra, but the surgeon had fixed the implant on L4-L5 that was the wrong level.

“The doctor admitted to the error and offered to do corrective surgery for free. We were, however, asked to pay for the consumables that included the implant cost of more than a lakh. The air fare and accommodation was also to be borne by us,” said Islam. The earlier surgery had cost them about Rs 4 lakh.

Meanwhile, Nahar underwent the corrective surgery in Apollo Hospital in Chennai on December 13. “The surgeon told us that it took an-hour-and-a-half only to remove the wrong implant,” said Nahar.

“It is a case of error of judgment and not medical negligence as these people are trying to project,” said Dr Jain. “There was a technical problem in the image intensifier that we use to get the real time picture during the surgery to confirm the level where surgery is to be performed,” he added.