Patna: A woman in Bihar died after the compounder served her acid to swallow medicines prescribed to her by a doctor at an eye clinic.
The incident took place at a private eye clinic in Muzaffarpur town, some 80km north of Patna, on Wednesday.
The woman identified as Shyamali Devi had been admitted to the clinic of Dr Amarendra Jha for cataract surgery, scheduled on Wednesday.
Reports said soon after her admission, the doctor checked the patient and prescribed her some medicines before the operation. After purchasing the medicines, the woman asked the compounder for water in order to swallow the pills. However, the compounder apparently offered her a water bottle filled with acid by mistake.
She opened the cork and hurriedly drank a mouthful of the liquid. Soon she turned restless and vomited. It was then that the family realised she had been offered acid, instead of water.
“The compounder handed her the bottle saying it is fridge water but she turned restless and fainted on the ground after drinking the liquid and died soon thereafter,” a local senior police official in-charge of the investigation, Dharmendra Kumar, told Gulf News by phone on Thursday, quoting the victim’s family members.
The victim’s grandson Kundan Kumar said the compounder asked her not to go looking for water and offered her a white-coloured bottle instead. “Whether he did it intentionally or by mistake, but my grandmother turned seriously ill soon after drinking the liquid,” Kundan told the media on Thursday.
Reports said soon after the doctor came to know of the incident, he got the woman admitted to another hospital for treatment, but she died soon thereafter. The compounder has been absconding since the incident. Family members said the acid caused boils in her throat and jaw, and she was restless.
Angry family members of the victim on Thursday created a ruckus at the eye clinic. The police have registered a case and a further investigation is on.
A similar incident was reported from the Bhojpur district some years ago when a six-month-old baby girl who was taken to a hospital with her fractured left leg was sent back home with a plaster cast on her right leg. When the baby did not stop crying even after the plaster cast was put and did not allow anyone to touch her left leg, her parents rushed back to the hospital the next day to consult the doctors. It was during this check-up that the doctors found that the baby had the plaster cast placed on her wrong foot.
Subsequently, the doctors took the cast off the right leg and placed it on the left.
