'Was asked to apologise to her': Indian-origin doctor on nurse guilty of killing babies in UK

Dr. Ravi Jayaram, an Indian-origin consultant paediatrician at the Countess of Chester Hospital, has alleged that he was asked to apologize to Lucy Letby, the nurse who has been convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others.

Jayaram said that he raised concerns about Letby's care of babies in the neonatal unit in 2015. However, he said that he was told to "draw a line under it" and to apologise to Letby for "victimising" her.

He told ITV News in the United Kingdom that he had been concerned about Lucy Letby for months before the hospital notified the authorities. Letby was found guilty on Friday of murdering seven newborns and attempting to murder six more.

Dr. Jayaram stated that experts raised concerns about Letby after three newborns died in June 2015. Following further such deaths, they had many meetings with hospital management to discuss the problem.

Letby was convicted of murder and attempted murder in May 2022. She is due to be sentenced on July 27, 2022.

The doctors were instructed to "draw a line" in the "Lucy issue" and apologise to her for alleged "victimisation."

Dr. Jayaram claimed that Tony Chambers, the chief executive at the time at the time, warned consultants at a meeting in January 2017, "I'm drawing a line under this, you will draw a line under this, and if you cross that line, there will be consequences for you."

When doctors proposed approaching the police, hospital management allegedly discouraged them.

Almost two years after the first baby died, the police were informed.  "I do genuinely believe that there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren't," Dr Jayaram told ITV News.

Letby, 33, faced a total of 22 charges, accused of murdering seven babies and trying to kill 10 more at the hospital, and will be sentenced at the Manchester court on August 21.

Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes at Cheshire Constabulary told ITV News that Jayaram and his colleague Stephen Brearey had been instrumental in catching the killer.

The UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the court that Letby used a variety of methods to secretly attack a total of 13 babies in the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.

During her trial, which began in October last year, Manchester Crown Court heard that doctors at the hospital began to notice a significant rise in the number of babies who were dying or were unexpectedly collapsing.

The CPS presented evidence of Letby using various methods to attack babies, including the injection of air and insulin into their bloodstream; the infusion of air into their gastrointestinal tract; force feeding an overdose of milk or fluids; impact-type trauma.

Her intention was to kill the babies while deceiving her colleagues into believing there was a natural cause, the jury was told.

"Lucy Letby sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby's existing vulnerability. In her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk, fluids or medication like insulin would become lethal. She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death," said Pascale Jones of the CPS.

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