HC comes down heavily on health dept official

Mumbai, Sep 5 (UNI) The Bombay High Court today came down heavily on the Joint director of the public health department as a report on four regional mental hospitals in the state, filed by him in the court, turned out to be an ''eyewash.;; The court has now directed the secretary of the public health department to personally visit all the four regional mental hospital, at Thane, Pune, Nagpur and Ratnagiri and undertake necessary remedial measures to improve condition of the hospitals.

Persuant to a petition filed by a nursing tutor Chandrakala Samant, the High court had directed additional director health services to visit mental hospitals and submit his report. Accordingly, a report was filed before the court, but it later it turned out to be just an eyewash as Judicial Magistrates of concerned cities found a different picture in the hospitals. Except the number of vacancies, the Joint director's report had showed a rosy picture.

A division bench comprising Justices J N Patel and Amjad Sayyad took serious note of the discrepancies and while observing that the Joint director through his report tried to mislead the court, asked the Principal secretary to put on affidavit as to what action the department proposed to take against the erring official.

The matter will now come up for further hearing after 6 weeks.

UNI