AP Photo

"We were surprised," Nitu Sodey recalls about taking her mother-in-law Chandrakala Bai to Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital in Indore in May 2009.

"We are low-caste people and normally when we go to the hospital we are given a five-rupee voucher, but the doctor said he would give us a foreign drug costing 125,000 rupees (£1,400)."

The pair had gone to the hospital, located in the biggest city in Madhya Pradesh, an impoverished province in central India, because Mrs Bai was experiencing chest pains.