PUNE: The Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) on Monday suspended registrations of Sassoon General Hospital’s former head of forensic sciences department Dr Ajay Taware and former casualty medical officer (CMO) Dr Shrihari Halnor, who are facing trial in the case of swapping blood sample of the teenager involved in the Porsche Taycan car crash on May 19, 2024.
Two young software engineers were killed in the crash in Kalyaninagar.
MMC administrator Dr Vinky Rughwani said, “Their registration as practicing and licenced doctors has been suspended on grounds of malpractice until pending enquiry.”
Taware and Halnor are lodged in the Yerawada central jail under judicial custody.
The MMC had asked for committee reports and documents from the Pune police and medical education department on which the decision to suspend both the licences was taken by the council. Halnor was the CMO who attended to the teen after the accident. It is the Pune police’s case that Halnor swapped the blood samples on the instruction of Taware.
Rughwani said, “We got the required documents from the police commissioner’s officer and the medical education department. We had multiple meetings and hearings in this regard and sent the suspension order to the two on Monday. The grounds for suspension are malpractice and unethical practice. The two have been suspended until pending enquiry so they would not be able to practice as doctors or get a job as a doctor until the suspension remains in place.”
Taware and Halnor were arrested on May 27, 2024, after the teen’s blood sample test conducted parallel at the Aundh district hospital, apart from the Sassoon hospital, gave different results and confirmed the police’s suspicion that the samples at the Sassoon hospital were swapped. Investigations later established that in exchange for money, the teen’s blood sample was swapped with that of his mother’s — a co-accused who is also in jail.
The teen’s father, a prominent builder, and other co-accused are in jail. They got two middlemen to handover the money to Halnor through a mortuary staffer at the forensic science department. The middlemen and the mortuary staffer have also been arrested and are imprisoned. The Sassoon hospital had already suspended the two doctors and the mortuary staffer.
