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Rebati’s father fears threat to their lives

CUTTACK: In a dramatic turn to Rebati’s blood sample theft case, her father Balakrishna Kahanra has filed a complaint at the local police station on Friday alleging that a staff nurse and a doctor of the hospital have taken their blood samples “deceitfully” with criminal intention.

Naming the nurse and the doctor in his FIR as accused, Balakrishna has even levelled attempt to murder charges against the duo stating that they (father and daughter) apprehend serious threat to life. “I suspect that the nurse while drawing blood from us might have injected something in our body which could lead us to some unforeseen danger in future”, Balakrishna said in his FIR.

Registering a case under section 379 (theft) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC against the nurse Malati Swain and Dr (Mrs) Pratima Sahu, police have started investigation, said the city DCP S Praveen Kumar. “During the course of our investigation if we find any evidence with regard to alleged attempt to murder charges as leveled by the complainant, we would progress accordingly under section 307 of IPC”, the DCP said.

Meanwhile, the nurse who works in the plastic surgery department of the hospital has gone on leave and is incommunicado while Dr. Sahu, an assistant professor in the bio-chemistry department denies the charges levelled against her. In a statement to Press, she said that she had intimated the hospital superintendent before drawing blood from the Rebati and her father.

“Since I am working on genetic disorder cases under the Department of Bio-Technology (DBT) project inside the hospital, I have the authority to examine the blood sample of any genetic disorder patient admitted in the hospital”, Sahu told The Hindu on Friday. This is never a case of theft. Rather I wanted to prepare some medical documents on the subject, which could have benefited the hundreds of medical students of the college, she asserted.

Dr Suryakant Narendra, a periodontal plastic surgeon treating Rebati, had on Wednesday alleged that the blood samples of her patients were stolen and a racket was operating in the hospital who are engaged in supplying rare medical evidences to foreign agencies in return of heavy considerations.

Rebati’s case is of hereditary disorder carrying auto-somal dominant trait in which the girl has unusual features like protruding jaws and uneven growth of hair in her entire body. For these ape-like features, the girl is now in focus and medical researchers are taking keen interest on her with the hope to throw some new lights on human evolution.

The manner in which the SCB medical college and hospital authorities are handling the case of Rebati clearly indicates that the medical researchers have taken it for granted that the poor, illiterate tribal girl is nothing but a “guinea pig” for them. In the name of treatment, the 16-year-old is now being used as a personal property of some researchers who are out to cash in on the rare genetic disorder she has acquired from her father, allege human activists and social scientists.

“Rebati, as a girl has suffered enough for her unusual ape-like features. Reconciling to their fate, the girl and her parents had learnt it in the hardest way to strike a balance in their society far away in a remote village of tribal dominated Boudh district. But the so-called messiahs, in the guise of treating the disorder, are now making a mockery of the ill-fated girl”, say the social scientists.

“She was brought from the remote village to the hospital more for research purpose than the treatment ”, feels sociology teacher R.K. Mohanty of Ravenshaw University. Even if Rebati is a prized catch for researchers, there should not have been an unholy competition among the researchers working under the same roof, Mohanty feels .

Now that the hospital authorities after a thorough enquiry into the case have drawn the conclusion that the nurse was not guilty of any criminal offence as she was carrying out orders of a fellow-doctor, the pertinent question now being asked as why the authorities did not involve all its resources and expertise in the beginning to treat this rare case.

“Rebati needs treatment from a team of specialists drawn from several departments including skin, orthopedic, plastic surgery and general surgery. A multi-dimensional approach should have been taken by the hospital authorities instead of allowing only the periodontal wing to handle the case”, said a senior doctor of the hospital requesting anonymity.

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