According to a letter sent by Bhuyan’s brother Ajanta to the hospital management, the surgeon in-charge, Dr I S Virdi, has confessed to them that he was instructed by Dr Pervez Ahmed, Max Healthcare’s executive medical director, to “complete the procedure (operation), do not inform the family” when told before surgery that the oxygen tube was wrongly connected to the patient’s aorta.

The family maintains that doctors should not have operated on Bhuyan given his condition.

Dr Virdi declined to comment on the issue.

Dr Parvez Ahmed said the hospital had already come clean. “We have spoken enough about this particular case; I have nothing more to add. I have not yet seen the letter (from Ajanta Bhuyan), so I cannot respond to the allegations made in it,” Dr Ahmed told Newsline on Wednesday.

The letter also says none of the test reports mention the time they were conducted. “We have asked for certified copies of all tests conducted on my brother since the time of admission,” Ajanta Bhuyan said. The letter asks why the family was not informed immediately about Bhuyan’s condition, and “despite the injury why did doctors go ahead with the procedure on a patient who already was brain dead?”