Sometimes timely medical intervention makes all the difference between life and death, but in the case of 61 year old Suresh Chander, it was timely judicial intervention that could have made that difference, but didn’t. He died waiting for a transplant.

A resident of Ambala, Mr. Suresh Chander had approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court on November 18, 2004, after the Authorization Committee turned down his request for allowing donation of a kidney to him by Mrs. Rekha, a close family friend. An appeal field before the Secretary, Medical Education and Research, Punjab, who is the appellate authority in such cases, was also turned down. In his petition, Mrs. Rekha had agreed to donate her kidney to him since nobody in his family could, due to medical reasons.

His petition was adjourned six times by a Bench headed by the then chief Justice, Mr. Justice B.K. Roy, without even a notice being issued to the respondents. It finally came up before a division Bench, headed by Mr. Justice H.S. Bedi on March 4, 2005, at which time the Bench was informed by the petitioner’s counsel, advocate Narender Hooda, that while waiting for the petition to be decided, the patient had died of kidney failure.