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Desai competent enough to claim exemption

To the editor:

Let me see if I understand this correctly.

Lawyers for Dipak Desai - the former doctor whose now-defunct Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada is accused of spreading hepatitis C infections among patients - have won many delays in his criminal case because they claim their client lacks competency.

So after a couple of years, and after many tax dollars were spent on his stays at mental facilities, Desai sells his house and is competent enough to file for a $550,000 exemption ("Desai house sells for $2 million," Wednesday Review-Journal).

What is the exemption for? This money should be earmarked toward the costs of housing him for his stay at the mental facility.

Once again government and the people affected by his lack of care and poor surgical procedures - which led to many cases of hepatitis, which can lead to death - are made to look like fools.

What about the average people who can't afford the lawyers who find every loophole to keep on getting stays and delays so the case is eventually lost in the shuffle? What about the people infected with hepatitis? How do you think they feel living with the knowledge they have a disease that can shorten their lives?

It's a joke for Desai to be able to file bankruptcy and avoid using all of the money from the home sale to pay as many creditors as possible. What is U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mike Nakagawa thinking?

The only thing worse than allowing the exemption of $550,000 from the sale of the house is to try to make us believe that a catalog done last year of the personal belongings in a house that cost $3.4 million and has more than 8,700 square feet came up with a value of only $28,000. The average house of a lot fewer square feet has that amount of personal belongings.

Why does the person who has done so many people wrong end up winning, while his victims get lost in the shuffle?

Mike Hardick

Henderson

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