Delhi Police Directives on Summons Delivery to Medical Professionals

New Delhi: In a move aimed at strengthening the efficiency of criminal trials, the Delhi Police has issued directives to ensure proper summons delivery to medical professionals.

Delhi Police has directed its district heads and station house officers to ensure the proper execution of court summons to doctors, taking an exception to delays in investigations due to them, according to an official circular.

Doctors are summoned as witnesses in criminal trials by courts to depose regarding the contents of medical reports including forensic and postmortem, an official said.

Investigations and hearings pertaining to the case get delayed when summons are not delivered properly, an official said.

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“….it has been observed that while serving summons in hospital to doctors, no efforts are made by the process servers to find out the present status of the doctors and summons are left in the Medical Record Department (MRD) of the hospital which causes unnecessary delay in serving the summons to the concerned doctor,” the circular read.

Process servers are those who deliver notice or legal documents to the concerned people, the official said.

Highlighting a court observation in connection to a 2018 case, the circular said, “The process server shall serve the summons upon the MRD asking specifically if the concerned doctor works in the hospital or not and if the concerned doctor is not working in the hospital, then the process server shall ask the present whereabouts of the concerned doctor from the MRD and on receiving the same he shall serve the summons on the concerned doctor at his/her present address, if any.”

“Only in the eventuality that the present whereabouts of the concerned doctor is not available, MRD shall authorise any other doctor who has seen the concerned doctor signing and writing during his official course of duties so that the doctor authorised by him can identify handwriting and signature of the concerned doctor in the court.”

“If no such doctor as mentioned aforesaid is available, any doctor from the same department can be authorised by MRD to depose in the capacity,” it added.

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