SC notice on Dutch man’s plea for medical treatment

New Delhi, April 22

The Supreme Court (SC) has issued notice to the J&K administration on a petition filed by a Dutch national, currently lodged in a Jammu jail, seeking direction to the authorities concerned to provide him proper medical treatment for paranoid schizophrenia at a specialised hospital.

Petitioner Richard De Wit (53), who was arrested in April 2013 in Srinagar for a murder, submitted that he had been in jail for almost 10 years and his medical condition was deteriorating as no proper treatment for the disease was available in the jail.

He contended that his fundamental right to health was being violated. He urged the top court to transfer him from the jail to a specialised medical facility in New Delhi or the Netherlands for proper treatment on an undertaking that he would return to face trial upon being cured.

A Bench led by Justice V Ramasubramanian on Friday asked the administration to respond to the petition in two weeks after petitioner’s counsel TL Garg and Rohan Garg submitted on behalf of the petitioner that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since his early years in the Netherlands and also underwent therapy there. The Bench allowed the petitioner’s counsel to serve a copy of the petition on the standing counsel for the J&K administration.

The incident happened in April 2013 when a British woman was found dead in her room on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Srinagar, the petitioner said, adding he was wrongly implicated in the case as he was also staying in a separate room on the same houseboat.