Jan. 29 (UPI) -- A man at an India hospital -- carrying a metal oxygen cylinder -- was violently drawn into an MRI machine by its magnetic force and died within minutes, his family said.
The incident occurred Saturday at BYL Nair Charitable Hospital in Mumbai.
The family of Rajesh Maru was told by a hospital employee, identified by India's NDTV as a "ward boy," that it was safe to enter the room and that the MRI machine was turned off.
When Maru entered the room -- in which magnetic items like jewelry, clothing with metallic fibers, zippers, metal buttons and metal implants can be attracted to the massive magnets in the MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, machine -- he was pulled into the equipment.
Patients lie inside MRI machines as magnets slowly revolve and image certain body parts.
Maru, 32, who was at the hospital to accompany a relative for an MRI scan, died within 10 minutes after hospital staff pulled him from the device and took him to the hospital's emergency ward.
An autopsy showed he died of a collapsed lung, which was caused by his inhaling the contents of the canister after it burst.
"It's because of their carelessness that Rajesh died," relative Harish Solanki said.
Mumbai police opened a criminal case against Dr. Siddhant Shah and ward attendants Vitthal Chavan and Sunita Surve, charging death by negligence. Shah and Chavan, who officials say told Maru it was safe to enter the room, were arrested.
The hospital has also begun an internal investigation.
