MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has discharged the managing trustee of PD Hinduja Hospital and Medical Research Centre, AP Hinduja, from criminal proceedings initiated in 1992, after a patient who underwent cataract surgery at the hospital lost vision in the operated eye, allegedly due to use of sub-standard ophthalmic drugs.
“Simply because a person is a trustee and termed or called as managing trustee of a trust, he cannot and does not become liable for each and every act by an employee in a pharmacy,” a single judge bench of justice Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale said while striking down the case against Hinduja. Apart from mentioning that Hinduja was the managing trustee, there was nothing else in the entire proceeding against him, the judge said.
Accordingly, criminal proceedings were launched before the magistrate court for contravention of multiple sections of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, against drugs manufacturers, dealers/ distributors, pharmacists, the hospital and its managing trustee. Hinduja approached the high court after the metropolitan magistrate court at Mazgaon rejected his discharge plea September 3, 2015 and the sessions court upheld the order on December 2, 2017. His counsel pointed out that he was roped in as an accused in the case only based on information furnished by the hospital to certain queries raised by the FDA. The court, however, refused to accept the argument, observing that civil obligations of a trustee cannot be conflated with criminal liability in such a general and casual manner.
In a preliminary inquiry, FDA claimed to have found that the drug used at the hospital was “not of a standard quality” and showed microbial growth when tested for sterility. The court said only being a trustee was not enough to initiate a criminal proceeding, unless clearly provided by a statutory provision. “A trustee or even a director of a company for that matter only by his position does not become per se liable or per se vicariously liable for any and every act (done by the trust or the company),” the court said, adding that it would be “a dangerous proposition to accept and would have far reaching consequences.”
