Patre was convicted for killing her three-year-old child and had served two years at the Thane Central jail. Of late, she had been complaining of severe cough, fever and breathlesness and had been brought to the hospital on several occasions, sources said. But each time she was treated at the out-patients department, and prescribed some routine multi-vitamin and iron pills.

Sources said that even though she had a history of tuberculosis, no doctor in JJ Hospital or even the prison medical officer could diagnose her ailment. ``She was looking so emaciated and her haemoglobin count was so low, that even a junior doctor could have been able to make out that she had TB,'' said a senior doctor. Also, though she was suffering from suspected HIV infection, no investigations were done to findout whether she had the disease.

When she was brought to the hospital on November 17, she was in a bad shape, sources said. But instead of treating her for TB, she was admitted to the psychiatry ward after doctors found that she was suffering from depression.

However, her condition deteriorated and she was finally shifted to the TB ward on November 21 at 2.15 pm, and a ventilator was requested for artificial respiration, sources told Express Newsline.

But there was no ventilator available and the patient finally died at 4.15 pm.

According to Dr Yusuf Matcheswala, honorary professor of psychiatry, JJ Hospital, though Patre was a known case of schizophrenia, she was not showing any psychotic symptoms when she was admitted to the hospital on November 17.

``She was admitted to the psychiatry ward so that she did not have to run around to get admission,'' he said. ``It generally happens that a prisoner patient is made to run around in the hospital since there are no relatives accompanying him,''he pointed out.

Though Dr Matcheswala admitted that the doctors who examined the patient first failed to detect that she was suffering from tuberculosis, he maintained that his department had put her on proper medication and transferred her to the tuberculosis ward when her condition became serious.

The professor insisted that she would not have survived even if she had been admitted directly to the TB ward since she was already in a ``very bad shape.''