Mamata Banerjee sends notice to SSKM Hospital for allegedly leaking her medical reports

Former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee served a legal notice to the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education & Research (IPGMER) authorities in Kolkata seeking an explanation on how the medical reports of her leg injury ahead of the 2021 state assembly elections reached present CM Suvendu Adhikari.

This comes days after Adhikari said that Banerjee faked her leg injury while releasing a five-year-old medical report which purportedly said that there was “no evidence of fracture/dislocation” on Banerjee’s leg.

“You are called upon to inform me or my client that whether any medical records pertaining to my client has been at all placed before the chief minister (Adhikari) and if so placed, then kindly intimate or my client the due process of law adopted by the department of radio-diagnosis while placing the said records before the chief minister,” the notice sent by Arka Kumar Nag, Banerjee’s counsel, read.

On March 10, 2021, hours after filing her nomination from the high-profile seat of Nandigram where she contested against her protégé-turned-rival Adhikari, Banerjee alleged that unidentified men attacked her. The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) started a probe into the incident then.

She claimed to have fractured her leg and campaigned over the next two months, even holding a road show on a wheelchair with a plastered left leg. Even though the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won the assembly elections, Banerjee lost to Adhikari in Nandigram.

“The findings of the department of radio-diagnosis in the Bangur Institute of Neuro-Sciences at IPGMER (popularly known as SSKM hospital) on March 11, 2021 stated that there was no evidence of fracture or dislocation,” Adhikari told reporters at the state secretariat on Saturday.

The legal notice was sent to the Manimoy Bandyopadhyay, director of IPGMER and two other senior officials of the hospital.

“If it is identified that no due procedure of law was followed while placing the medial records of my client before the chief minister (Adhikari), then it shall be the legal liability of your office to initiate necessary steps in accordance with law against politically motivated officers of your institution involved in causing such delinquency and breach,” the notice stated.

Bandyopadhyay, refused to respond to calls and messages sent to him.

“She is committing a mistake. I asked the authorities to send me the notice through the state health department. She had ordered a CID probe into the incident. I would ask her not to dig further. If I make the X-Ray plates and MRI reports she would not be able to come out of her house. The documents were not with the SSKM hospital authorities. If needed I would reveal from where I got the documents,” Adhikari told media at the state secretariat on Monday.