Apollo doctors put condition for deposing before panel probing Jayalalithaa’s death

Doctors at Apollo Hospitals, who attended to late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa, will not depose before the one-man judicial panel set up to probe her death till the commission constitutes a 21-member expert medical board.

The doctors want the medical board to whet the recorded depositions. “Doctors from Apollo will not depose before the commission till the expert medical team is constituted,” Maimoona Badsha, counsel for Apollo Hospitals at the Justice (Retd) Arumughaswamy Commission of Inquiry, told the reporters in Chennai on Thursday.

The Commission had summoned 11 doctors to appear before it for cross examination on Thursday but none of them came for deposition. Jayalalithaa was admitted to the hospital on September 22, 2016 and passed away on December 5.

“We have filed a petition to form a team of medical experts to assist the panel since the depositions of the doctors are not being recorded properly. There are lot of discrepancies in entering the medical terms and procedures which will go against the purpose for which the commission was constituted. Till that time our doctors will not appear before the commission,” Maimoona Badsha said.

The counsel for Apollo Hospitals also dismissed speculation that Jayalalithaa had suffered brain death. Jayalalithaa was given the best medical care and the doctors from AIIMS, New Delhi came on the request of the state government, she said.

“Without the assistance and support of such a medical board, it would be next to impossible for the commission to arrive at a conclusion on medical facts,” she made it clear.