We have come across many cases where doctors are beaten up by the patients’ families and other outsiders. Any person, and especially doctors, are not supposed to be treated that way since they are involved in a profession responsible for saving lives. Many say that doctors do “God’s work”, justified enough but it may become a problem if they turn themselves into arrogant and ignorant beings. A similar story is narrated through the plot of “Ankur Arora Murder Case”, where a little boy sinks into coma and finally dies due to the hospital’s negligence.
Since the beginning of the movie we are shown two conflicting characters, Dr. Asthana and Dr. Romesh. We could see that their priorities were very different, they had different ideals. Dr. Asthana mostly believed in how to run the business that earned him his living. He told Ankur’s mother that operation could only take place the following day in spite the operation theatre being available. This was because he wanted to keep the patient for another day to churn out money from them. Romesh had his personal ethics in place and opposed to this. Corporate ethics are pitted against personal ethics when Romesh stands against professional negligence meted out by most trusted doctor hospital, Dr. Asthana. He was told by nurse Rosina that the kid (who had come to the hospital with a simple case of appendicitis) ate a few biscuits, one hour prior to the operation which could have deadly consequences. Asthana blatantly forgot that he had to use the Ryle’s tube in order to extract the food from Ankur’s stomach and he ended up in coma. Ankur passed away after 2 days. Romesh got to know it later but took no time standing up for truth and justice.
He approached the doctor to admit his fault in front of the Naina (Ankur’s mother) however, he was only redressed with threats. Dr. Asthana had previously cautioned the doctors in the Operation Theatre (which included Riya, Romesh’s love interest) and the nurse to keep shut or their positions and careers shall be compromised. This is plain harassment. All this was the result of the mismanagement of crisis. The doctors had tried to retrieve the kid, who slipped into coma after their cumulative failure. They lied to the parent saying that his lungs had collapsed after the operation was over. The management tried the best to cover things up and put him on ventilation before he passed away.
A case was filed against the hospital, management and especially Dr. Asthana by Romesh and the victim’s family. At this hour, instead of being sympathetic towards the deceased’s family they counter by alleging them of blackmail and extortion. The redressal mechanism of the management only focussed on saving their own collars and in the least did they think of the death of an individual.
Another example of workplace harassment could be the prosecutor lawyer (Kajori Sen) being threatened by her senior and the defence lawyer for the case (Rajiv Mallani), on the grounds that she had previously taken his help in climbing up the ladder of success. Now he tried to demean her by discouraging her attempts to win the case, calling her names and trying to break the witnesses and evidences using money and force. Both the lawyers had a history of an extra-marital affair and only when Mallani asked Kajori to get an abortion did she realise the pain of losing a child. Had this incident not happened, both of them would have worked together in order to confuse the case and prolong in order to suck out more cash from both parties. Here too, we see a how personal ethics barged in from a sense of apprehension of the truth of their relationship. She left behind the mindset of minting money at the cost of justice and righteousness.
At the very end when Riya finally released a footage of a sting operation that she had pulled on Dr. Asthana finally closes the case. He is sentenced of 3 years of prison. This sting operation was actually in opposition to work ethics but when we question one’s conscience, probably that was the right thing to do.
The entire storyline of the movie gives us several examples of management failure, a battle of ethics and backlash from organisations when you want to stand against them.
BLOGBLOG 