Registered Homeopathy practitioners have a statutory duty not to practice any other system of medicine.

Thiru Justice K. Sampath, President—The complainant in COP No. 32/96 on the file of the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Tiruvannamalai, is the appellant herein. Her case was as follows : On 25.9.1993 at 11 a.m. she got treated for her headache by the opposite party, a practising Homoeopathy Doctor at Thellar and in the presence of her father. During the treatment, the opposite party took a syringe and needle which were kept on the table, filled the syringe with Tetramycin and injected on her left hand. He also gave some tablets after getting a fee of Rs. 9. Within an hour she felt that she could not lift her hand, she developed intolerable pain and on the same day evening she came again to the opposite party complaining of pain; the opposite party told her that the pain would subside in due course. Believing that, she bore it. But the pain did not subside. She went again to the opposite party. There was no relief even then. Therefore, she went to Dr. Basheer Ahmed who referred her to Dr. Nandha Kumar and Dr. S.S.K. Ayyar. She suffered mental torture and agony due to the negligence of the opposite party in administering injection. The complaint came to be filed claiming a sum of Rs. 1 lakh towards compensation, damages, medical and travel expenses, etc.

2. The opposite party filed a counter stating that he did not treat the complainant on 25.9.1993 nor did he give any injection to her on that day. He did not know who the complainant was and that she did not approach him at any point of time. He was ignorant about the alleged ailment. He being a Homoeopathy practitioner, he did not give injection to any of his patients. Only to harass him due to professional rivarly the complaint had been filed.

3. Exs. A-1 to A-11 were marked on the side of the complainant. No documents were marked by the opposite party.

4. The District Forum held that though the complainant had filed as many as 11 documents on her side, none of them would prove that she had taken treatment under the opposite party and had paid Rs. 9 for the treatment given by him to her and in the absence of any material evidence, it could not be held that the complainant had hired the services of the opposite party. So holding, by order dated 8.12.1998, the District Forum dismissed the complaint without costs.

5. Before us, the complainant has taken out an application for reception of the prescription alleged to have been given by the opposite party on 25.9.1993 as an additional document and marking it as an exhibit on her side. In the affidavit filed in support of the application for reception of the prescription as an additional evidence, it is stated that the complainant had given the relevant documents to her Counsel who conducted the case before the District Forum, Tiruvallur; inadvertently the said Counsel had not filed it in Court, that she was able to ascertain the same only after receiving the order copy from the District Forum, that all the relevant documents were filed in the year 1999 itself before this Commission and a copy of the same was also served on the Counsel for the respondent; when the appeal was taken for final inquiry the Counsel for the complainant/appellant referred to the additional document filed before this Commission and on perusing the same, this Commission directed the respondent/opposite party to be present before the Commission; the respondent who appeared before the Commission denied the execution of the document and stated that he had given any treatment to the complainant; and, therefore, the present application came to be filed and that she may be permitted to file the prescription as an additional document. The appellant/complainant also prayed to send the prescription to a Hand Writing Expert for comparison with the admitted writing of the opposite party.

6. Though an application has been taken out for sending the document to Hand Writing Expert, since it is only a hand writing, we feel that it would not be necessary to send