A man died allegedly unattended at the Central Referral Hospital at Tadong in Gangtok on Tuesday night, the third instance in about a week when the families of the dead have accused the hospital authorities of negligence.

Jagat Bahadur Chhetri, 48, had suffered head injury after he had fallen down from his bed at his home in Turuk, South Sikkim, on Tuesday morning. He was first taken to the Namchi District Hospital, which referred him to the CRH.

“After travelling for three hours from Namchi, we reached the CRH around 7pm. However, no hospital staff was available to attend to my |father despite making numerous requests to the nurses and other employees. He remained in the car in which we had brought him for about two hours and died there,” alleged Ashika Chhetri, the daughter of the deceased.

Ashika said her father was responsive all along the 80km drive from Namchi to Gangtok and would have survived had the hospital authorities attended to him immediately. “I have registered a complaint with police against the hospital authorities,” she said.

The CRH management, however, said one of doctors had attended to the man in the car itself and “the patient was declared dead in the Emergency”.

In a written statement, the management said it had taken serious note of the incident and had constituted a probe panel. “The management at CRH has constituted a committee consisting of specialist in forensic medicine and doctors …for postmortem examination,” it said.

Earlier in the month, families of two other patients had levelled similar allegations of neglect against CHR. The hospital had set up an inquiry committee to probe the two deaths, and its findings are awaited.