SC ticks off panel probing Jaya’s death27/10/2021 “How will Dr. Reddy get the documents of a U.S. hospital? What they did was out of a Robert Ludlum novel,” Mr. Sundaram said. Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for Tamil Nadu, which wants the Commission to finish its work and submit its report, retorted sarcastically that John Grisham would be a better choice of author. “Grisham is more straight-forward. Ludlum is better, considering the intricacies involved,” Mr. Sundaram shot back.Mr. Sundaram clarified that he was not seeking to arrest the inquiry into the circumstances leading to the former Chief Minister’s death. “Please do not stop the inquiry, but do appoint someone else with very strict guidelines. They should have a competent medical board to assist them… I am not here to thwart the inquiry,” he submitted on record.The proceedings before the CoI were stayed by the Supreme Court in April 2019 on a plea by Apollo Hospitals that the inquiry panel’s functioning was “replete with bias”. “Parties who had criticised her while she was living now express sadness after her death,” Mr. Sundaram said. He said the CoI was supposed to be a fact-finding body and not a “fault-finding body”.Justice Nazeer then asked a legal question about the hospital approaching the court at this stage. The judge said the CoI reports are usually placed before the Legislative Assembly. “Bias is a ground for me to come to court at any time of the inquiry. If my reputation is affected, anytime. There are three grounds on which I can come. They are bias, natural justice and jurisdiction... Can I have a reasonable feeling of non-bias here?” Mr. Sundaram replied.Apollo Hospitals had submitted that the Commission, instead of conducting an impartial probe, had filed a pleading alleging “criminal intent” on the part of the hospital and its doctors. Justice Nazeer asked whether the process of the CoI was adversarial or not. “Can the Commission participate as a litigant?” he asked. Mr. Sundaram replied that the process was not supposed to be adversarial.Mr. Sundaram had previously argued that the Commission was filing applications “on its own behalf before itself” alleging negligence on the part of the hospital in the treatment of Jayalalithaa. “The CoI has to only extract the facts... This Commission goes about saying how this or the other treatment could have prolonged the CM’s life — now is this a medical fact-finding body? The CoI may be proficient in law but how does the CoI give expert views on medical terms which can be hardly pronounced... I have no faith in the Commission and everything it has done has to be called off,” he said.