Whose Record Is It? The Doctor Standing Between an Injured Detainee and a Police Escort

The Doctor Is the Last Neutral Witness

• and the One Under Most Pressure Imagine you are the doctor on night duty at a government hospital. A police team brings in four young detainees from a protest. You examine them and record what you see: swollen fingers, bruises, a bleeding cut. One of them asks you for a copy of the summary. A police officer standing at the door says that will not be necessary. Your medical superintendent has, in effect, told staff not to share anything during protests. What do you do?

Why this is genuinely hard The easy answer is "give the patient the record." But consider what that answer costs the person who must give it.

• You are a government employee. The hospital administration that may resent your defiance also controls your postings and your future.
• The police are not a distant institution. They are the people in front of you and they bring patients to your emergency ward every night.
• You may tell yourself the record is safe anyway. You have written it truthfully and two copies go to the police. Withholding a copy from the patient can feel like a procedural detail rather than a betrayal. That is why a decent doctor might hesitate. The hesitation is not cowardice; it is a real conflict of loyalties.

Why the

hesitation must still give way The record is not just a clinical note. It is the patient's evidence. Medical documentation is often the only independent proof of what happened in custody. Records from Delhi's 20 July protest reportedly confirmed pellet-gun injuries even though police had denied using pellet guns. The rules are clear on whose document it is:

• Under Regulation 1.3.2 of the Medical Council of India's 2002 ethics regulations, a doctor must provide medical records within 72 hours of a patient's request.
• Under Section 53 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, an arrested person must be medically examined and given a copy of the report.
• The D.K. Basu guidelines of 1997 made medical examination of detainees a core safeguard against custodial abuse. A copy held only by the police is a record the patient cannot use. If the very authority accused of causing an injury controls the only proof of it, accountability ends at the hospital door.

What the

protesters allege Saurabh, a Jamia Millia Islamia student associated with AISA, says he and three others were taken under police escort to Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital, where injuries were recorded but no copies were given.

Sooraj Elamon of the SFI says Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital first agreed to hand over papers, then refused after police became involved. These are allegations; police and the hospitals had not responded.

The resolution Give the patient the summary and inform the patient of the right to the MLC copy.

Record the request and the response. If pressured, put the instruction in writing to the superintendent. The cost is real: friction with superiors and with the police and possibly the career. But a doctor's first loyalty is to the patient. In custody, that loyalty is the patient's only protection.