NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has dismissed a review petition to relook its order awarding a compensation of over Rs 1.54 crore to a veteran of Air Force on account of medical negligence due to transfusion of HIV infected blood after he fell sick during 'Operation Parakram' in 2002 at Jammu and Kashmir.
A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Prasanna B Varale declined to consider the review petition filed by the Commanding Officer and others against the judgment of September 26, 2023.
"The judgment and order under review does not suffer from any error, much less apparent error, warranting its reconsideration. That apart, no other sufficient ground has been set up for granting the relief claimed in the review petition," the bench said in its order passed on April 3.
The court had earlier held Air Force and Indian Army vicariously liable for medical negligence by allowing petitioner's appeal against the order by the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission which had rejected his complaint.
The court had then said the people sign up to join armed forces with considerable enthusiasm and a sense of patriotic duty, but in the instant case the fundamental principles of dignity, honor, and compassion were glaringly absent in the respondents' behavior.
The staff here was diagnosed with HIV in 2014 after he fell ill.
Going by the hospitalisation record of 2002, Medical Boards were held in 2014 and 2015 in which his disability was found as attributable to service due to the transfusion of one unit of blood in July 2002.
He was discharged from service in 2016. His request for extension of service or grant of disability certificate was also declined.
“Although this court has attempted to give tangible relief at the end of the day, it realises that no amount of compensation and monetary terms can undo the harm caused by such behavior which has shaken the foundation of the appellant’s dignity, robbed him of honor and rendered him not only desperate but cynical,”
the bench had then said.
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