Tamluk, July 21: Officials in an East Midnapore government hospital have been putting an unauthorised rubber stamp on admission slips that says "we are admitting the patient knowing his condition is bad" in the wake of an instruction that the number of referrals to Calcutta must be reduced.

The stamp, which says " rugir obostha kharap janiyao bhorti korilam", is being used on the admission papers of serious patients in the East Midnapore district hospital for the past six months.

The superintendent of the hospital today told this correspondent he had instructed all ward masters to confiscate the stamps, adding he did not know about the matter till now.

Sources said the officials started using the stamp in January on the instructions of a section of junior doctors, who had been asked by hospital superintendent Gopal Das to bring down the number of referrals to Calcutta.

The decision to reduce the number of referrals followed an administrative meeting chief minister Mamata Banerjee held in Digha in December. Told that the referrals were "abnormally high", she was quoted as asking: "We have made all the arrangements at the hospital. Then why are so many patients still being referred to Calcutta?"

In about a week, the number of referred patients came down from 250-300 a month to an average of less than 100, the sources said.

Some junior doctors told this paper that admitting a large number of serious patients meant a higher risk as patients' relatives often turned on doctors in the event of deaths or alleged negligence.

"The admission papers on which the stamp is being put are signed by the patients' relatives. This, in a way, protects junior doctors from being targeted by patients' kin," a doctor of the hospital said.

Superintendent Das said: "I did not tell the doctors to get the patients' relatives to sign on the admission papers that had the stamp on them. This is inhuman."

Junior doctors in government hospitals are often targeted by patients' families in the event of deaths, which may or may not be the result of negligence. In November last year, a doctor in the East Midnapore district hospital was heckled and several workers and nurses beaten up after the death of a patient.