The Mumbai High Court on Wednesday asked the Maharashtra government to respond to a PIL seeking implementation of the Mental Health Act 2017 and investigation of mental health care institutions that fail to regularly assess the condition of patients to determine if they can be allowed to live in society.
The plea said implementation of the Act would protect the rights of people with mental illness and allow them to mobilize mental health review boards to seek discharge. It also seeks implementation of Supreme Court guidelines regarding mental health care homes and mentally ill patients.
A division bench of Justice SS Shinde and Justice SV Kotwal was listening to the PIL presented by psychiatrist Dr. Harish Shetty, who highlighted the plight of institutionalized patients, including a woman, who had languished in the Mental Hospital Regional in Thane for 12 years. The guilty plea stated that neither the woman’s husband nor her family were willing to accept her, although her condition was declared normal in 2014 and she was ready to be discharged. She entered the institution in 2009.
The HC was told that despite the hospital following the Mental Health Act 1987, which stipulated regular monitoring and reporting, the woman ended up spending “12 precious years of her life” in Thane’s institution and was discharged IN 2021 only after the recommendation of a court-appointed panel of experts.
According to the PIL, a family court judge recorded that the Mental Health Review Board’s search for the woman was “arduous” and failed to take advantage of the benefit of the 2017 law. The judge also discussed the possibility that other people similarly languish in mental health institutions. After the government attorney sought time to receive instructions from officials to respond to the guilty plea, Judge Shinde detained the attorney and questioned how the state can be “casual” in “crucial matters involving questions about the public in general” while maintaining that the same was non-adversarial litigation.
Subsequently, Advocate General Ashutosh Kumbhakoni appeared before HC and sought time to respond to the guilty plea and said that he would study the Supreme Court’s order on a similar issue before submitting his submissions. The HC accepted this and posted the next hearing for April 12.
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