The Plight of the PLIH – With Malice to None

In a city starved of medical space, this is more than neglect—it’s a humanitarian failure. Reviving PLIH is not optional; it’s an urgent moral responsibility.

Dear Mumbaikars,

The Parsi Lying-In Hospital (PLIH), situated within the precinct of Fort in Mumbai, has stood redundant, disused, and often misused, for the last three decades. Which, as reported in the media, is “criminal” in this healthcare-spacestarved city of Mumbai. The PLIH was established by a few well-meaning Parsees in the mid-1890s as a maternity hospital for Parsi ladies. It is reported that Firoze Gandhi, husband of our late PM, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, was born in this hospital in 1912. In 1924, through an order of the High Court, the Founders handed over the fiduciary ownership of the hospital to the Bombay Parsi Panchayat. The Managing Committee continued to run the day-to-day affairs of the hospital. Understandably, as is the case with the Petit Parsi General Hospital, located off August Kranti Marg.

Owing to inadequate usage of the hospital making it an unviable healthcare facility, an application was filed in the Civil Court, Bombay, in 1973, and an order was passed wherein the hospital was made available for use by non-Parsi patients. The PLIH is hence a SECULAR hospital.

Later the Management Committee got themselves registered under the Bombay Public Trust Act 1950 and had the PLIH property entered in ScheduleI of their Trust Deed. We hence have two trusts the Bombay Parsi Panchayat, or BPP, and the PLIH Trust, claiming fiduciary ownership of the property. It is reported that the last patient was discharged in 1994, and the hospital thereafter, remains redundant, unused, and often misused for the last three decades. The duality in the fiduciary ownership,both by the BPP and the PLIH Trust, appears to be the cause célèbre of this tragic and criminal neglect.

My involvement in the resurrection of this secular healthcarefacility was a mere happenstance subsequent to my visit to the Tata Memorial Hospital in Aug 2022. It all started with my letter dated 15 Sep 2022, addressed to the Chairperson of BPP, suggesting that the unused PLIH be offered to the Tata Memorial Hospital (after consulting the Director, TMH).

Regrettably, this remains unanswered and unactioned, though I have personally come under a lot of flak from certain quarters of the community. Apparently, I have committed a sacrilege by suggesting that we hand over a “community jewel on a platter”. That notwithstanding, my efforts to resurrect this healthcare facility continue unabated. Who does it is inconsequential.

It is interesting to note that since this trust has been registered under the Bombay Public Trust Act- 1950, under Rule 41AA, it becomes incumbent on the part of the trust to set aside 10% of the beds for the underprivileged at subsidised rates and open the Indigent Fund of 2% of their turnover for free medical aid to the indigent citizens. Regrettably, owing to the unauthorised termination of the operations of the PLIH, this healthcare facility has been denied to the underprivileged and indigent members of our society.

In my efforts to get this hospital operational, I have contacted the Charity Commissioner with whom rests my protracted correspondence, in addition to my personal visits. I have requested him to initiate action under the relevant clause which gives the CC powers to appoint an administrator if he opines that the aims and objectives of the trust are not being met.

My correspondence also rests with the Collector, Mumbai, requesting him to initiate action against the concerned trustees, for misuse of leased land, as was recently done in the case of a college gymkhana. I have also addressed a letter to the Grievance Cell of the High Court of Bombay requesting the Chief Justice to consider my application as a suo motu PIL.

For your information and support in this humanitarian cause.

Jai Hind. Jai Maharashtra.

(The author is a retired Indian Navy officer.)