The owner of Delhi’s Vivek Vihar hospital, where six newborns were killed in a fire, reportedly ran several facilities in the national capital and was pulled up many times by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) over glaring regulatory lapses.
A report in Hindustan Times stated that the revelations were made in official documents as investigations revealed a pattern of violations that culminated in Saturday night’s tragedy.
Five of the oxygen cylinders had exploded during the deadly blaze in which six newborns were killed and five injured. The bodies of the newborns, aged between one day and 20 days, were handed over to their families after post-mortem examination.
On Monday, a city court allowed the Delhi Police’s plea seeking three days of custodial interrogation of the owner and an on-duty doctor of the private hospital.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vidhi Gupta Anand sent Dr Naveen Khichi, the hospital’s owner, and Dr Aaksh to a three-day police custody.
Past Incidents When Vivek Vihar Hospital Owner Pulled By DGHS
• According to HT report, the health regulator in 2018 moved court against Naveen Khichi for illegally operating a paediatric hospital in Vivek Vihar Block B, metres away from the facility in Block C that erupted in flames on Saturday.
• In 2019, the Directorate General of Health Services found that Khichi had continued to operate a hospital he owned in Paschim Puri, despite the agency scrapping its licence over rule violations. The HT report stated that the facility stayed open for years, flying in the face of the censure, before it was issued a licence in 2022. It then hurriedly shut its doors on Sunday night as outrage against Khichi swelled.
• “The registration of Paschim Puri nursing home being cancelled by this Directorate (in 2018-19), the keeper (Khichi) continued nursing home activities…,” the publication quoted official documents. DGHS then moved the Tis Hazari court against Khichi in 2020. Around the same time, said the document, Khichi filed a complaint with the National Commission for Scheduled Castes.
• The report quoted officers involved in the investigation as saying that Khichi’s run-ins with regulatory trouble go back several years. “He ran five hospitals at one point — in Vivek Vihar B and C blocks, Paschim Puri, Faridabad and Gurugram,” a Delhi Police officer was quoted as saying. “The facility in Vivek Vihar B Block was shut after legal trouble, and the ones in Faridabad and Gurugram were closed after they failed to recoup costs,” he was further quoted.
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