2 decades after surgery paralysed him,techie dies

The condition was brought on by high blood pressure,said officials at a local hospital where Dhananka died

Prashant Sheshadri Dhananka,41,crippled by medical negligence when he was 20 years old and awarded a record Rs 1 crore as compensation by the Supreme Court in 2009,died here on Tuesday following a cerebral haemorrhage that left him in a coma for a week.

The condition was brought on by high blood pressure,said officials at a local hospital where Dhananka died after having shown great courage and resilience for two decades to battle a life condition brought on in 1990 at a hospital in Hyderabad.

Prashant spent over 700 days in hospitals around the country after he was left paralysed on an operating table at the Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences as a final-year engineering student after being diagnosed with a benign tumour in his chest region.

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Despite being paralysed from the chest downwards he went on to complete his engineering degree,emerged as a star in his information technology sphere,and worked 12 to 13 hours as a software engineer at Infosys until recently.

When awarded the Rs 1 crore compensation on May 14,2009 by the Supreme Court after the Andhra Pradesh High Court had awarded only Rs 15 lakh,Prashant had asked his mother Indira Sheshadri,is it enough for me to live till I am 75 years. He had sought a Rs 7 crore compensation from the hospital.

Once a champion swimmer and a tennis player,Prashant needed a personal attendant for everything he did from turning him every three hours in the night to sitting up since his paralysis.