A 70-year-old man admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhubaneswar for knee replacement committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in the orthopaedic ward of the premier health institute late on Monday night.

Sources said Dilip Kumar Sahoo, who hailed from Atalapur village in Jajpur district, took the extreme step as a result of mental trauma as doctors detected a number of health-related issues, including kidney problems, while conducting tests on him for knee replacement. He was admitted to the hospital on December 5.

Sahoo’s 16-year-old daughter Harapriya said: “My father was a cook. He had met with an accident in our village and suffered injuries in the knee. He was earlier undergoing treatment at the local hospital. As his condition deteriorated, we shifted him to AIIMS.”

She added: “But there was an inordinate delay in his treatment. After blood started coming out of his urine, doctors told him to discharge him as knee replacement would be done later. Procedural delays necessitated his stay in the hospital ward that night. But he was in shock and asked the security guards to switch off the lights near his bed and later committed suicide.”

However, hospital sources said that his knee operation could not take place as there were problems with his kidney. “He was under treatment in the nephrology department. The doctors said he needed to recover before replacement of his knee. He was asked to stay near the hospital and given a week’s time for knee replacement operation,” said a hospital source.

However, there is still no explanation for the nursing staff not being able to notice the man committing suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in the ward. “Nearly five to six staff are there in the ward. How none of them noticed him while taking the extreme step,” asked a relative of Sahoo.

AIIMS has constituted a six-member team to probe the incident. The hospital authorities claimed there was no negligence on their part.