However, he didn’t realise at that moment that he had made history until the case was reported to the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. “It took more than 10 hours to reattach the entire face and scalp,” said Thomas. As soon as he sewed the first artery the reattached face turned scarlet with blood. It was an arduous job, because he had to reconnect numerous nerves and blood vessels. So he decided to put back Sandeep’s own detached face and scalp from the plastic bag. As an experienced microsurgeon he was well aware how such skin grafts are readily rejected by the reciepient’s immune system. Thomas knew that any effort to repair Sandeep’s face with skin grafts harvested from elsewhere on her body would backfire. “Initially I didn’t think I could do anything.” “It was an utterly frightening sight to see that blood-drenched face,” recalled Thomas, now the principal, Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences, while talking to KnowHOW. As luck would have it, the plastic surgeon, Dr Abraham George Thomas, was on duty. The distressed family packed the detached face in a plastic bag and rushed the unconscious girl to the hospital, 150 kilometres away from their village, Chak Khurd. The grass-cutter kept on dragging in until the skin above her neck tore, and her scalp got ripped off. The hapless girl’s face was amputated when her braids got caught in a threshing machine while her mother was chopping grass to feed the family buffaloes. The face and scalp (see picture below) of Sandeep Kaur, a nine-year-old girl in a village near Ludhiana, arrived at the Christian Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana, in two pieces. The world’s first full-face replant surgery was unwittingly accomplished by a plastic surgeon in India, 11 years ago. NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Wednesday a batch of petitions on the Pegasus issue for the first time after October 27 last year when it had ordered setting up of a three-member panel of cyber experts to probe allegations that the Israeli spyware was used for surveillance of certain people in India.Landmark case: (From top) Dr Abraham Thomas, Sandeep Kaur after operation and her detached scalp and face In one of the significant verdicts in recent times over the issue of citizens' right to privacy, a bench headed by the CJI had on October 27 last year ordered setting up of the panel saying mere invocation of national security by the state cannot render the judiciary a "mute spectator" and had asserted that indiscriminate spying on individuals in a democratic country cannot be allowed.Īn international media consortium had reported that over 300 verified Indian mobile phone numbers were on the list of potential targets for surveillance using Pegasus spyware. In recent times, reports emerged that the probe panel has been facing difficulties as very few people were coming forward to depose before it or submit their devices for technical scrutiny. The committee is requested to prepare the report after a thorough inquiry and place it expeditiously before the court, the bench had said. Justice Raveendran, who is heading the monitoring panel, has been assisted by former IPS officer Alok Joshi and Sundeep Oberoi, Chairman of Sub Committee in International Organisation of Standardisation/ International Electro-Technical Commission/Joint Technical Committee, in monitoring the inquiry of the technical panel. The panel members were Naveen Kumar Chaudhary, Prabaharan P and Ashwin Anil Gumaste. The panel, which included three experts on cyber security, digital forensics, networks and hardware, was asked to "enquire, investigate and determine" whether Pegasus spyware was used for snooping on citizens and their probe would be monitored by former apex court judge R V Raveendran. A bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli has listed as many as 12 PILs, including the ones filed by Editors Guild of India and veteran journalists N Ram and Sashi Kumar, for hearing on February 23 and is likely to peruse and analyse the report which was to be filed by the apex court-appointed panel.
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