HC begins hearing plea of arrested Vizag doctor

The hearing of a habeas corpus writ filed by the wife of a doctor arrested from Visakhapatnam remained inconclusive in the Orissa High Court today.
A division bench of Justices Indrajit Mohanti and Sangam Kumar Sahoo adjourned the hearing to Monday as the petitioner's counsel could not finish his arguments.
Objecting to the arrest and detention of Seven Hills Hospital director N Prabhakar Babu by the Cuttack city police, his wife's counsel Satyabrata Pradhan argued in the court that the Odisha police did not have any legal sanction to arrest a neighbouring state's doctor.
"It's only the appropriate authority under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act that has the power to take action against Babu," Pradhan said.

Since no such authority took note, the arrest was illegal, he contended.
The 58-year-old Vizag doctor was arrested by the Cuttack police for an alleged illegal kidney transplant surgery performed on a Cuttack woman at the Seven Hills Hospital in Vishakhapatnam.
Babu was arrested on June 17 and produced before a lower court here on June 29. He was in 14-day judicial custody.