The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Centre’s expert panel a week’s time to file its response in a case where patients received faulty hip implants from Johnson & Johnson, ANI reported. Dr RK Arya, the director of Safdarjung Hospital’s sports injury centre, is heading the committee.

At its last hearing on October 5, the court had directed the government to submit the expert committee’s report within a month.

The Supreme Court was hearing a public interest litigation filed by Arun Goenka claiming that more than 15,820 persons were fitted with the faulty implants. Last week, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had approved compensations between Rs 30 lakh and Rs 1.23 crore for patients who received the implants before August 2010. The government’s decision was made on the recommendations of the expert panel, which was set up in September.

The hip implant devices, known as DePuy ASR, were manufactured by DePuy Orthopaedics Inc, a fully-owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. The patients who got the implants had to undergo revision surgeries due to severe pain in their hip, inability to walk, destruction of bone and deposition of harmful metal debris of the implant inside body tissue.