The West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission has asked AMRI Hospitals Mukundapur to pay Rs 3 lakh compensation to the parents of a seven-year-old boy, who had died at the hospital, after it found that the authorities did not communicate the boy’s condition to his parents properly.

Retired judge Ashim Banerjee, the commission’s chairperson, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the parents were in the hospital when the condition of the boy, who suffered from Down Syndrome, turned critical. But the hospital apparently “did not counsel the parents and did not communicate the boy’s condition” to them, he said.

“The family complained that the parents were in the hospital’s lounge when the child was admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU), yet the hospital did not inform them when the child passed into a critical stage,” Banerjee said.

“The hospital claimed that they had counselled the child’s parents, but we did not find any documentation of the claim,” he added.

The commission also asked RSV Hospital in Tollygunge to pay Rs 1 lakh as compensation to the family of a 34-year-old man, who passed away at the hospital in October.

The man left behind a note where he wrote that a housekeeping employee of the hospital did not change the bed one night despite it getting wet. “As the patient tried to urinate on his own, the bed got wet. When he requested the housekeeping employee to change the wet bed, the man refused,” said Banerjee.

During Wednesday’s hearing, the hospital claimed they had terminated the service of the employee but the commission felt that the hospital could not absolve itself of all responsibilities by firing the employee.

On Wednesday, the commission also asked Dr Pal’s, a hair transplant and hair loss treatment clinic in Salt Lake, to return Rs 1.04 lakh to a person, who had paid the amount to the clinic. “The 41-year-old complainant told us that he had lost hair after undergoing treatment at the clinic, instead of growth of hair,” said Banerjee.