SC stays deal for defunct Rs 120-crore SoBo hospital

The Supreme Court has stayed the deal the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) entered into with Krimson Healthcare for leasing the Rs 120-crore Parsi Lying-In Hospital at Fort, which has been defunct for the past 21 years.

The Supreme Court has asked the defendants to answer within four weeks. Lying-in is an old practice where a woman took bed rest for after giving birth.

The stay order was in response to a petition filed by Dinshaw Rusi Mehta (the outgoing chairman of BPP) and trustee Armaity Tirandaz against the deal, where petitioners contended that proper procedures had not been followed and that the deal happened in closed-door transactions.

Reacting to the stay order, Mehta said, “Justice has been done. We (the petitioners) were against the way the deal had been done. We are not saying the Krimson deal is a bad or good offer. It may be very good, but we were against the fact, specifically, that there was no public notice given for the deal. The managing committee of the hospital misrepresented themselves saying they are trustees of the hospital, which is false. We (the BPP) are the trustees, so this was a fraudulent claim.”

However, four trustees from the BPP itself support the Krimson deal, pointing to a schism in the apex body, which incidentally goes in for elections on October 18. Sources said, “What has hurt the most is that first, all the BPP trustees were against the deal. Somewhere in the middle, four trustees crossed over and are now defendants of the Parsi Lying-In Hospital. It is an indicator of divisions within the BPP itself.”

Published in Mid Day