Dr Archana Suicide case: Father-in-law moves SC, seeks CBI Probe

New Delhi:  Following the suicide of a doctor in Rajasthan's Dausa, the deceased's father-in-Law on Saturday moved the Supreme Court seeking directions to transfer the investigation of the death case of Dr Archana Sharma registered by local police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The petitioner sought directions that no FIR be registered against any doctor merely on the allegations of the complainant and in any case, the FIR must not be registered against a doctor in an alleged medical negligence case without the prior permission and approval of a higher-ranked police officer, not below the rank of the Inspector General of Police of the area concerned. 

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The petitioner, Ashok Kumar Upadhyay further sought directions for quashing the FIR registered at Police station-Lalsot, District-Dausa (Rajasthan) under Section 302 IPC wherein deceased Dr Archana Sharma and her husband Dr Suneet Upadhyay have been named.

Advocate Avadh Bihari Kaushik, counsel for the Petitioner, alleged that the accused in the present case are having a high political and police approaches and are also having money and muscle powers therefore, the petitioner is left with no faith in the State machinery to do justice to him.

The petition further alleged that the high ranked police officials are involved in the matter but no action has been taken by the State authorities against the erring police officers who are not only equally liable and responsible for the suicide committed by Dr Archana but they also deliberately and willfully violated the directions of this Court and hence, petitioner has no trust or faith that the State Police would conduct a fair and impartial investigation in the case.

The petitioner is of the firm belief that every effort to derail the investigation and to culminate the same in a 'no fault of accused person' shall be made by the local police and no action whatsoever shall be taken by the police against its own officers.

Recently, a plea was also moved by a Doctor's body, Indian Medical Association (Dwarka) which sought directions for constituting a CBI enquiry into the circumstances which led to the unfortunate death by suicide under mysterious conditions of a young gynaecologist.

The petition also stated that such incidents in Dausa (Rajasthan) are quite common across the country and there are no regulations/policies/guidelines for the prevention of such unfortunate incidents and a large number of doctors are becoming deceased on account of the unprotected atmosphere of the profession.

There is an urgent need for the creation of a medico-legal cell at every police station across the country to look into the incidences related to medical negligence cases like instant cases which could have been handled with much effective sensitivity in order to ward off the said horrible incidents, plea read.

A pregnant woman died at a private hospital reportedly due to a postpartum haemorrhage during childbirth and following protests by relatives of the deceased woman, a First Information Report (FIR) for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code was filed by the state police at the Lalsot Police station against Dr Archana Sharma.

Following this, Dr Sharma allegedly died by hanging on March 29 inside a room of the hospital. Police said a suicide note was recovered from her room. An FIR has been registered in the suicide case and police have launched an investigation, Dausa Station House Officer, Shankar Lal Meena said. 

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