Jharkhand high court on Friday passed a scathing remark against Ranchi civil surgeon V.B.Prasad describing as "inhumane" the inordinate delays conducting Covid tests and asked him not to play with the lives of of people.

A division bench of Chief Justice Dr Ravi Ranjan and justice Sujit Narayan Prasad made the observation during a virtual hearing of a PIL related to poor management of the state-run Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS).

State health secretary K.K.Soan, Ranchi civil surgeon Prasad, and others involved were connected to the day's court proceedings online.

During the course of hearing, the wanted to know on the reasons behind delay in test reports of the samples collected from high court. The bench noted that the samples were collected by Sadar hospital on April 5, but the test reports were yet to be given.

The bench criticised the civil surgeon for the delay. “If this is the situation of high court personnel, then we can imagine how common people could be struggling for getting timely test reports. Such delays could lead to destroying of the samples and results could be inaccurate, putting one’s life in jeopardy,” the court observed.

The bench then told the civil surgeon that it was " inhumane" and you (civil surgeon) should tender your resignation if the official concerned isn’t able to do the job properly.

The court, will hear the matter on April 2, directed the civil surgeon to furnish a detailed report before that.