Devarsh with his mother Sapna Jain.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement

When most children of his age run around their homes or play outside with friends, five-year-old Devarsh Jain lies motionless, confined to a bed in a permanent vegetative state.

Brain damage, allegedly suffered during birth at a local hospital, has left the child entirely dependent on a caregiver forever.

With Devarsh unable to communicate either through speech or motion, his parents find themselves in a relentless battle to understand his silent struggles. For the past five years, they have been knocking at every possible door seeking justice.

Startling revelation

In May, Devarsh, through his father Sachin Jain, filed a petition before the Delhi High Court claiming that two doctors — Vivek Jain and Akhilesh Singh — who were responsible for the treatment of the child in the neonatal ICU at Fortis Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, were at the time not qualified specialists.

Taking cognisance of the matter, Justice Jasmeet Singh on June 14 issued notices to both the Delhi government and Fortis Hospital seeking their respective responses.

The plea claimed that Dr. Jain had not obtained the requisite certificates which would have allowed him to practise as a specialist then but was appointed a super-specialist.

In the case of Dr. Singh, the plea said, the hospital has allowed him to work as a senior consultant (neonatology, paediatrics). “The website of the hospital claims him to be a specialist based on Diploma in Child Health. This diploma has been stated by the National Medical Commission not to be a recognised qualification,” the plea highlighted. 

When The Hindu reached out to Fortis Hospital, it said, “The petitioner had earlier filed a case with similar allegations before the High Court and the same is pending. Allegations made therein have been vehemently denied and objected to by the clinicians concerned. Treatment to the patient was as per standard medical protocols.”

Kept in the dark

However, in the plea, the parents claimed that their child suffered hypoxic injury in the brain at Fortis Hospital where he was born on August 12, 2017 and remained in the neonatal ICU till August 23, 2017.

“After the injury was inflicted, the hospital [doctors and the management] orchestrated a false story and deceptively concealed the injury from the parents and discharged the baby stating he is healthy,” the petition said.

“At the time of follow up as well, the doctor misled the parents and asked them to ignore the fits/seizures noticed by them,” it said.

The plea said the child remained completely deprived of any treatment for seven to eight months and suffered chronic pain, regular seizures and infantile spasms without any medical support that aggravated the injury to his brain.

However, when the child was once again taken to Dr. Jain at Fortis Hospital, the parents were told that he was a “child with special needs” and should be treated by a neurological paediatrician.

When Devarsh was finally taken to a neurologist, it surfaced that he had by then developed a rare disease called “West Syndrome” and was diagnosed to be suffering from epilepsy and cerebral palsy. “It is medically understood that had any treatment been accorded to him at the right time, many of his disabilities and pain could have been taken care of,” the plea stressed.

In 2019, the child through his parents had moved the HC seeking transfer of investigation in the case from Delhi Police to the CBI “for carrying out a time-bound probe into the incident of injury to the newborn”. The same is pending adjudication.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Medical Council (DMC) on August 13, 2019, passed an order concluding that the records of the hospital show that standard medical protocols had been followed and therefore, there was no negligence on the part of doctors.

The child then filed a separate petition before the HC against the DMC’s order. On January 8, 2020, the court stayed the DMC’s order. This case is also pending before the High Court.