Kolhapur: The state public health department suspended Satara civil surgeon Dr Yuvraj Karpe, pending a departmental inquiry, on Wednesday — a day after alleged negligence over the swapping of two bodies at the district civil hospital.The suspension letter cited dereliction of duty as the reason behind the action but did not specify the incident that resulted in such dereliction of duty.In a case of gross negligence at Satara Civil Hospital, the body of a 26-year-old accident victim from Wai was mistakenly handed over to the relatives of a 51-year-old patient who had died in the hospital around the same time. The mix-up was discovered during cremation, which had to be halted midway at Arale village near Satara. Two staffers from the hospital’s postmortem department were suspended.The body-swap incident comes days after the Satara civil hospital, under Karpe, is facing a Bombay high court-assigned inquiry by the principal secretary-II (public health) over the allegation of a newborn being deliberately starved to death for DNA sampling following a medical termination of pregnancy performed on a rape survivor, who was in her 24th week of pregnancy. The HC had cleared the MTP procedure on the rape survivor.The rape survivor and her mother accused the civil hospital authorities of submitting a false report as the MTP had failed and the newborn was starved to death. The principal secretary has to submit the inquiry report to the HC on April 2.The suspension order states that Karpe’s headquarters will be the office of the deputy director of health, Kolhapur, and he shall not leave the headquarters till the departmental inquiry is over. The order also states that during the period of suspension, Karpe will not join any private service or indulge in private trade or business or otherwise it will be considered as misconduct and accordingly the action will be prescribed as per the service rules.On Tuesday, Karpe had suspended two staffers from the hospital’s postmortem department for negligence after the mix-up in handing over the two bodies to the relatives came to notice.Even a few weeks ago, the Satara Civil Hospital had reported exchange of bodies. But in Tuesday’s incident, one of the bodies was partially cremated causing its desecration.
