CHENNAI: Apollo Hospitals welcomed the Supreme Court Order to constitute a Medical Board headed by the Director of AIIMS, New Delhi to aid the Armughaswamy Commission probing the circumstances of the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
In a press release on Tuesday, the hospital said the apex court’s order fully vindicates its own earlier position, that a team of medical experts should have been constituted to aid the commission in its process. It added the court has provided immense relief to the hospital and the medical fraternity, especially the doctors who treated the late CM.
According to the release, the latest order allows the hospital to cross-examine, recall any witness or individual including those witnesses whose evidence has been since closed, and also lead its own evidence.
The Director of AIIMS will nominate a panel of doctors, who are specialists in the fields of treatment of ailments as suffered by the late CM. It also mandates the Commission to furnish the Medical Board with complete records of the proceedings. The Medical Board is also permitted to participate in all further proceedings of the Commission, and a copy of the report will also be furnished to Apollo, it added.
The hospital said it places on record that it has always extended its support of and co-operation in the ongoing inquiry and it shall continue to do the same in the proceedings to follow. It is confident that the Supreme Court order buttressed the inquiry commission with sufficient checks and balances to enable the inquiry to be now conducted in a fair, accurate and efficacious manner, the release added.
‘Court order is a great relief to the doctors’
The hospital said the SC order fully vindicates its own earlier position on constituting a team of medical experts to aid the commission. It added the court has provided immense relief to the hospital, especially the doctors who treated the late CM