SCB Medical College and Hospital. Telegraph picture

Cuttack, July 18: The Sriram Chandra Bhanja (SCB) Medical College and Hospital authorities today came out with a statement refuting the allegation of theft of the blood sample of teenager Rebati Kahnr and termed the information “inaccurate”.

The hospital superintendent, D.N. Maharana, said the blood was collected as a part of a “routine check” but had led to confusion “due to lack of communication between two departments”.

The peculiar case of the 16-year-old tribal girl had prompted the biochemistry department to collect her blood samples for analysis at research laboratory.

A staff nurse working under the instructions of Pratima Sahu, an associate professor in charge of the biochemistry research laboratory, had drawn the samples from Rebati on Wednesday morning.

“There was nothing illegal or alarming about it as a government circular authorises the biochemistry department to collect sample when a case is either unusual or interesting that warrants analysis for research,” SCB superintendent D.N. Maharana told The Telegraph today.

“The associate professor had not followed proper procedure. Neither the treating doctors, nor the hospital administration was informed before the blood samples were collected from Rebati,” the superintendent said.

However, he regretted that the case had been “unnecessarily blown out of proportion by the media and raised baseless and unfounded apprehensions in different circles”.

The hospital superintendent had undertaken an inquiry after receiving a formal complaint from Suryakanta Narendra of the department of periodontics under the dental wing.

Rebati of Khalisahi village in Boudh district was brought to the hospital in June for treatment of unusual gingival enlargement and abnormal growth of hair all over her body, giving her an ape-like appearance.

She has since been a subject of rare experimental surgery by a team of doctors at the department of periodontics at the dental wing of SCB Medical College.

While five operations have already been conducted on her, seven more surgeries are expected to follow.

The doctors, on July 14, decided to conduct a genetic analysis to find out the DNA sequences of Rebati under the guidance of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in collaboration with the Institute of Immunology, Mumbai.