The dangerous doctors who get away

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Editor's note: There’s a hospital in Mumbai named Jupiter, and it has more complaints than its namesake planet has moons. Its motto is “patient first”, but some patients admitted into its 400,000 sq. ft super-specialty expanse didn’t feel like they came first. Some never even lived to complain, so their loved ones speak on their behalf, manifesting the first four of grief’s seven stages on the internet. A woman who lost her father likens the hospital to Yamlok, the abode of the Hindu god of death. “If you love somebody, don’t admit them here,” warns a man who lost his newborn. Others call it a moneymaking racket. But hospitals and their doctors—especially those engaged in high-risk specialisations—are used to infuriation. Such is the double-edged nature of modern medicine: the better it gets at improving our health and life expectancy, the more inflamed our passions at the odd failure. What happened to Sipra Bakshi was not the odd failure. It was negligence. So claims her daughter Konkana Bakshi—not online, but in case CC/17/366 before the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission. It began …