MADURAI: A doctor facing a serious charge of implanting expired stents on cardiac patients is the DMK's chosen candidate for the upcoming bypoll in south Tamil Nadu.
Dr P Saravanan, the party's medical wing secretary who has been fielded from Tiruparankundram in Madurai, has had his anticipatory bail rejected, twice, by the Madras High Court earlier this year.
It didn't escape anyone's attention that the first salvo came from within the party's first family, the Karunanidhis, when dissident leader MK Alagiri’s son Dhaya Alagiri took to social media to trash the choice.
Almost immediately after DMK announced the candidates, he tweeted, "So sad to know that Madurai DMK doesn't have any better candidate than Saravanan to contest the by-elections." He even tagged it ‘#KaasuPanamDhoduMoneyMoney’ (sic), a viral song made up of synonyms of 'money' from a quirky Tamil hit film (Soodhu Kavvum, meaning evil engulfs) that talks about the manipulations possible with money power.
Saravanan, an oncologist by training who is the managing director of Saravana Multispecialty Hospital in Madurai, is one of the accused in the case.
Incidentally, it was Saravanan himself who approached the Madurai city police in June 2015, complaining that an agency had sold expired cardiac stents to the hospital. However, the case took a turn after Saravanan was named as one of the accused in the case.
Police said it was a surprise insurance audit by a third-party administrator which brought this alleged fraud to light. Saravanan, too, is involved in it, colluding with the trader to procure expired stents at low price and implant it on unsuspecting patients. These were the poor, largely uneducated and possibly unaware of the details, as indicated by the police charge-sheet that said the implants were done under the Chief Minister Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme (CMCHIS).
The investigators also submitted to the court the details of about 10 such patients, into whose arteries these stents were inserted. The case was later transferred to the Central Crime Branch (CCB) wing of the police.
When his anticipatory bail plea came before the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court, the government counsel opposed it vehemently. According to the police, a third-party administrator appointed by the United India Insurance to monitor CMCHIS conducted a surprise inspection at the hospital. But Saravanan claimed innocence, blaming the traders of allegedly bribing two of his staff to place the expired stents in a bid to bring disrepute to his hospital.
But the court was not convinced. Considering his bail plea along with that of the cardiologist at his hospital, Dr RA Janarthanan, the court not just dismissed it, but also came down heavily on the two for allegedly disregarding the threat to the lives of the patients. “The needy can become a milch cow for satiating the greed of ingenuous entrepreneurs and immoral professionals,” the court had observed then.
He then moved the Supreme Court with a Special Leave Petition, but soon withdrew it and instead filed another anticipatory bail plea before the HC. The court dismissed it yet again, stressing that the allegation against him was that “he committed a heinous crime violating the ethics of the noble profession”.
Opposing the anticipatory bail plea, the CCB said it was necessary to take Saravanan under custody for interrogation. Curiously, however, they did not arrest him despite the advance bail pleas being rejected twice.
Dr Saravanan was the Madurai rural district secretary of the MDMK before switching over to the DMK in December. He was a DMK man originally, before moving to MDMK for a couple of years and even flirting with the BJP for a few weeks. His quick promotion as the candidate in place of old hands, too, has rankled the party ranks in Madurai. The most effective weapon they have against Saravanan is the criminal case against him for violating medical ethics.