Hyderabad: A district consumer commission has held a private hospital and a neurologist jointly liable for the 2020 death of a University of Hyderabad (UoH) PhD scholar, ordering them to pay his parents Rs 1 crore in compensation for medical negligence.
The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Hyderabad, in an order dated Tuesday, August 25, found Citizens Speciality Hospital, Nallagandla, and its consultant neurologist, Dr Aparna Vijay Kumar, negligent and deficient in treating Surya Pratap Bharati, 30, a scholar in the Department of English at the university.
The bench of President B Uma Venkata Subba Lakshmi and members C Lakshmi Prasanna and B Raji Reddy directed the hospital and the doctor to jointly and severally pay Rs 1 crore towards loss of dependency, income and prospects, along with Rs 50,000 in legal costs.
The amount must be paid within 45 days, failing which it will draw 9 percent annual interest from the date the order is received.
The commission dismissed the complaint against the three other opposite parties named in the case, Medcis Pathlabs India Pvt Ltd, Continental Hospital, and Continental’s consultant neurologist Dr Kailas Mirche, with no costs.
According to the family’s legal counsel, Advocate Rajasri Manche, founder of RJM Law Office, Bharati suffered a brain stroke on Monday, August 17, 2020, and was rushed to Citizens Hospital on a referral from the university’s health centre.
Bharati was found unconscious in his NRS hostel room, unable to move one side of his body, said his friend Sonu Surendran, adding that there was no delay in getting him to the university health centre and then to Citizens Hospital, Nallagandla, on the centre’s referral.
His attendants allege he was placed in an isolation ward without being told his treatment plan or prognosis, and that the hospital reported a COVID-19 positive result before directing them to shift him to a dedicated COVID facility.
“He was moved to Continental Hospital on Wednesday, August 19, and put on a ventilator, with doctors saying he had little to hope of improvement. Here, a COVID-19 test at Continental came back negative. He was then declared brain dead,” Surendran told Siasat.com. “However, we got another test done as well, which also returned negative,” he added. Amid this, Bharati suffered a cardiac arrest and died on Friday, August 21, 2020.
Bharati was from a village in Mau district, Uttar Pradesh, and was a first-generation scholar whose parents worked as daily-wage and agricultural labourers, the family’s counsel said. He was reportedly close to submitting his doctoral thesis at the time of his death.
Manche took up the case pro bono at the request of Bharati’s university friends, filing the consumer complaint in 2022 and seeking Rs 5 crore in compensation. “Surya was not just a promising young scholar; he was the sole beacon of hope for a family that spent their lives in daily-wage labour to build his future,” Manche said. “Taking up this case pro bono was vital because justice shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for those who can afford it. This verdict reinforces patient safety, accountability, and the non-negotiable duty of care owed by healthcare institutions.”
Bharati’s university friends, who said they pursued the case in their individual capacity without backing from any political organisation, had first raised allegations of medical negligence against the Hyderabad hospital days after he died in 2020, holding a condolence meeting on campus and filing a police complaint at Chandanagar station.
According to legal counsel in the case, the Rs 1 crore award is the largest compensation amount granted by a district consumer forum.
This post was last modified on August 31, 2026 12:02 pm