The son of a 60-year-old man, who died in a city nursing home, has moved the state consumer redressal forum, demanding a compensation of Rs 15 lakh for his father?s death.

Recently, the forum had held a doctor responsible for damaging an arm of a seven-year-old boy and directed him to pay Rs 5 lakh as damages to the child?s father.

In the present case, petitioner Shubhankar Ganguly, of Ramakrishna Pally, in Nimta, alleged that his father had died because of the ?rash treatment of the doctor and negligent attitude of the nursing home?.

According to the case records, Shubhankar?s father complained of pain in his lower abdomen and visited a doctor in March last year. The doctor advised him some tests, following which he was advised to be admitted to a nursing home on VIP Road for a minor operation in the rectum.

The operation was performed on June 7. The next day, when Ganguly?s relatives went to the nursing home, they were told the operation was successful and the doctors were satisfied with the patient?s progress.

?But on the second day, we found the patient restless. He told us he was suffering a pain in the part of the rectum that had been operated upon,? said a relative of Subhankar.

The petitioner informed the forum that he got no reply from the authorities when he asked them about his father?s condition. ?One of the doctors told us that my father was just going through a normal post-surgical discomfort.?

But as the patient?s condition showed no sign of looking up, his family took him home. The nursing home charged them Rs 1.5 lakh, excluding the cost of the medicines.

Subhankar then consulted some ?eminent? doctors, who observed that the rectum had been badly damaged. The doctor who had performed the surgery then convinced Subhankar that the patient would recover if he conducted a second operation.

On July 20, the patient was admitted to the same nursing and went under the knife for the second time. But soon after, he slipped into a coma and died on August 24, 2004. ?For the second surgery, the nursing home charged more than Rs 2.5 lakh,? the petitioner said. It was later revealed that ?gross negligence? was the responsible for the death. ?The doctor had asked the duty nurse to compress the operation area with vapour. But the nurse, instead, forced the patient to sit on a pot containing boiling water,? Subhankar alleged in his petition.