NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has held that doctors cannot be "unnecessarily harassed" by patients or their claimants to extract compensation for death or disability due to alleged medical negligence. A bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and H S Bedi said on Wednesday that it was the bounden duty of society to ensure that doctors perform their duties without apprehension of malicious prosecution though the interests of the patients should be paramount. "The medical practitioners at times also have to be saved from such a class of complainants who use criminal process as a tool for pressurizing the medical professionals/hospitals, particularly private hospitals or clinics, for extracting uncalled for compensation.
Such malicious proceedings deserve to be discarded against the medical practitioners," Justices Bhandari writing the judgement said. The apex court made the remarks while…
