Indian-origin doctor convicted of manslaughter in UK

LONDON: An Indian-origin doctor, who worked in Britain's National Health Service, was today convicted of manslaughter and given a six-month suspended jail sentence.

Priya Ramnath, 60, injected Patricia Leighton, an intensive care patient with adrenaline against the advice of three colleagues in the Stafford District General Hospital in July 1998.

Ramnath, who now lives in the US, was convicted of the patient's murder and handed the suspended jail sentence at the Birmingham Brown Court for going against the wishes of three colleagues and failing to speak to a consultant anaesthetist at the hospital before injecting the drug into Leighton.

The doctor came back from the US last February to face the charge after being threatened with extradition. The jury found her guilty by a 10-2 majority while Ramnath denied manslaughter by gross negligence.



Leighton died from heart failure shortly after she was injected with the drug. The prosecuting lawyer, Michael Burrows, told the trial that she was being treated in an intensive therapy unit in the early hours of the morning.

He said that within moments of the injection Leighton jerked forward in her bed and exclaimed: "What's happening to me? I am going to die." She lost consciousness shortly afterwards.