Pe­ter Bal­roop

Dr God­frey Ra­jku­mar, a lead­ing T&T gy­nae­col­o­gist whose ca­reer has been in the dol­drums for the past five years, is one step clos­er to be­ing al­lowed to prac­tise his pro­fes­sion again. Ra­jku­mar, 64, had a law­suit for mal­prac­tice re­sult­ing in the death of his pa­tient, Naris­sa Mo­ham­dal­ly, sud­den­ly with­drawn by a le­gal team, head­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan in San Fer­nan­do High Court on Wednes­day. What at­tor­neys had agreed would have been a six-day tri­al fin­ished in half an hour, the Sun­day Guardian learnt. The with­draw­al came when Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in did not al­low Ram­lo­gan to com­plete his ver­bal ap­pli­ca­tion to have part of ex­pert wit­ness, con­sul­tant histopathol­o­gist Dr Sha­hee­ba Bar­row's writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny, in which she stat­ed she could find no le­gal cause for the pa­tient's death en­tered in­to the court's records. Jus­tice Gob­in found the state­ment to be de­fi­cient, be­cause while Dr Bar­row had tak­en spec­i­mens from the de­ceased's body, she had not sub­mit­ted her find­ings in her re­port to the court.

Af­ter Bar­row lodged a com­plaint with the Med­ical Board of T&T, Ra­jku­mar was found guilty on Feb­ru­ary 16, 2005, of "in­fa­mous or dis­grace­ful con­duct in a pro­fes­sion­al re­spect," and his name struck from the reg­is­ter of med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers. He ap­pealed the de­ci­sion and there was one hear­ing in Oc­to­ber, last year, in the Ap­peal Court be­fore a three-judge pan­el head­ed by Jus­tice Alan Men­don­ca and now a judge­ment is be­ing await­ed. Now that he has been vin­di­cat­ed in the mal­prac­tice suit, sources close to Ra­jku­mar told the Sun­day Guardian he was hop­ing that his ap­peal against the Med­ical Board would be set­tled speed­i­ly and judg­ment with a favourable de­ci­sion ar­rived at with despatch, so he can re­sume his work in the pro­fes­sion that he has prac­tised for 32 years. Friends say it was the first time the re­spect­ed gy­nae­col­o­gist, who had treat­ed some 24,000 pa­tients, had ever been sued, though he had ap­peared as an ex­pert wit­ness in court.