It has also been found that fake injections were used to treat the patients. The hospital is running without some essential drugs following the robbery and it is obviously the patients who have to bear the brunt. It seems the authorities have not only failed to stop pilferage and robbery, but they have also not been able to procure the medicines and injections that the patients have to be given regularly.

Mental patients form the most vulnerable and helpless segment of humans deserving sympathetic treatment. And they get it in any civilised society with a modicum of sensitivity to their plight. But that was not to be in this case. How could spurious injections be administered to the mental patients, as alleged by some local people? Who knows how much damage has been done to the patients. And who are accountable for their sufferings?

The probe body has done a good job. The gross violation of medical ethics and theft of medicines had to be detected in the interest of all concerned. But we believe such detection is not enough, the culprits who have looted medicines and cheated the patients in many ways deserve much tougher punishment than routine departmental action, which they are often subjected to, in such cases. The deviousness of a crime like pushing fake injunctions needs little elaboration.

It is a matter of great worry that professional criminals have made inroads into places like hospitals. They must be evicted from such places if we want healthcare to retain its meaning. A poorly run mental hospital, with a bunch of thugs entrenched at its heart, is by no means the answer to a sharp rise in the number of mental patients.