India, Oct. 22 -- Patients are being denied the care they deserve at a civic hospital in Malad due to a peculiar problem - a missing register. Sources in the hospital, however, claim it's the other way round; the missing register is being used as an excuse to decrease the workload at the MW Desai Hospital, a peripheral hospital run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

The register in question is the Medico-Legal Case (MLC) register, which the MW Desai Hospital has not been maintaining for years. As a result, all routine cases that require the police to be notified are referred to other hospitals.

All government and municipal hospitals must maintain an MLC register for medico-legal cases, that is, cases that may require polic...