Mumbai: BMC to probe man’s death after getting sucked in MRI machine

Rajesh Maru (Photo: Twitter)


The city civic body has set up a committee to inquire into the death of a man after he allegedly got sucked into an MRI machine and inhaled the liquid oxygen that leaked out of a cylinder he was carrying.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is also planning to issue stricter guidelines to all civic-run hospitals in view of the incident, an official said.

A senior official of the civic-run Nair Hospital in Central Mumbai today said the BMC has set up a panel to inquire into the incident.

Rajesh Maru was accompanying his elderly relative when he was allegedly allowed to enter the MRI room at BYL Nair Charitable Hospital with a metal oxygen cylinder, which was helping the patient breathe. According to media reports, a ward boy said that it was fine to carry the oxygen cylinder.

The oxygen cylinder’s metal reportedly activated the machine’s fatal magnetic field after which the man was pulled with severe force along with the cylinder. If the reports are to be believed, Maru’s hand got stuck between the MRI machine and the cylinder and the magnetic field was so strong that he couldn’t pull himself away.

The police, however, said Maru was killed when he inhaled excessive oxygen that oozed out of the cylinder when he entered the MRI room with a relative, who was there to undergo the scan.

The official claimed that the oxygen was in liquid form which is poisonous and the victim inhaled it in an excessive amount and died on the spot.

A doctor and a ward boy have been arrested as the police booked three staffers of Nair Hospital for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

 

(With PTI inputs)