NEW DELHI: At least 15 people in northern India have lost the sight in one eye after having “botched” cataract surgery, local officials told AFP on Tuesday.

The surgeries were performed last week at a mass surgery organised by a charity in Haryana state’s Ambala district, but the problems only came to light after patients began turning up at a local government hospital.

Ambala’s chief medical officer Vinod Kumar Gupta said the organisation, Sarv Kalyan Sewarth Samithi, did not have government permission to hold the surgery.

“We are on the ground right now to inspect the hospital and our medical teams are collecting details from the patients,” Gupta told AFP.

“So far we only know of 15 patients who were operated on and their surgeries botched. “We know that when they came to the government hospital they had lost vision in the eye which had been operated upon.”