In terms of the judiciary system, all of them have a fair amount of flaws, but this time, the Supreme Court of India comes to the rescue of an American kid facing a medical emergency. The court permits his distant Indian cousin to perform a liver transplant.
The court handled it in a really perfect way, making it clear that exceptions should be made when cases like this arise.
The American kid, holding an overseas citizen of India card, was initially admitted to a private hospital in Gurugram, seeking treatment for decompensated biliary cirrhosis (DBC). Decompensated biliary cirrhosis is an advanced stage of liver disease where the liver can no longer function adequately, leading to severe complications such as fluid retention and mental confusion.
Justices A.S. Bopanna and M.M. Sundresh presided over a legal challenge involving Section 9 of the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act (THOTA). This section obstructed a liver donation from a distant Indian cousin to a child due to restrictions on non-“near relative” foreign recipients, as defined in the Act. The term ‘cousin’ is not defined as a near relative as per the act.
During the judgment, the bench said, “At the outset, we clarify that though the provisions as contained in The Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994, as well as the Citizenship Act, were referred to during the course of the submissions on either side, in our opinion, the instant case would not be an appropriate case to consider the same in detail.”
The court continuously clarified by placing medical emergencies ahead of legal complexities. In this case, the child’s parents were unfit for the donation of the organ, and though his cousin seemed a good fit, it was Section 9 that was preventing the procedure.
