The Supreme Court has directed the Indian Army and Air Force to pay compensation of Rs 1.54 crore to a former Air Force officer for transfusion of HIV-infected blood in 2002. Due to this grave medical lapse, the then Air Force officer, who was involved in Operation Parakram in Jammu and Kashmir against the attack on Parliament House in 2001, became afflicted with AIDS after being transfused with a unit of deadly HIV-infected blood in the military hospital. And he also lost his Air Force job.

Holding the Army and Air Force responsible for medical negligence, a division bench of Justices Ravindra Bhat and Dipankar Dutta directed the government, courts, tribunals, commissions and quasi-judicial institutions to follow several guidelines under the HIV Act, 2017 in cases of blood transfusion. Said.

In its decision, the division bench said that it should be ensured that compensation of Rs 1,54,73,000 should be paid to the appellant for the troubles he faced due to the medical mistake. One person's mistake cannot be justified in this work. Rather, it is against the respondent organizations Air Force and Indian Army who will have to jointly take up this responsibility with immediate effect. The Air Force will have to pay the entire amount of compensation to the victim officer within six weeks.

If the Air Force wishes, it can divide this compensation amount half with the Army. Apart from this, the entire arrears of disability pension should also be paid to them within six weeks. The victim former officer alleges that when he fell ill in a field hospital in 2002, he was given HIV infected blood transfusion. And then he became an AIDS patient. Due to this disease he also lost his job in the Air Force.

He alleges that in 2014 he fell ill and was declared suffering from HIV. The medical board declared him unfit for service in the Air Force. After this, the military hospitals also refused to provide him any medical help.