Sethi never wanted to take individual credit for the Jaipur foot and he also refused to patent the technology he developed with scientific inputs from several others in IIT Bombay and Department of Science and Technology, saying that it should remain available for anyone to use, to modify and to improve upon. This was something which the NGO never accepted, says Sethi's daughter-in-law Vimala Ramachandran.

The NGO was cut-up with the fact that the Magsaysay went to the doctor rather than to Mehta who had quit IAS to set up the NGO to propagate the Jaipur foot, she says.

Today, the Jaipur foot is nobody's monopoly and if MVSS has fixed over three lakh limbs, then Gandhigram, an organisation in Mysore, has fixed as many, and so have several hospitals which have artificial limb centres not only in India but all over the world.

Sethi was against taking credit for the achievement and so, when an artificial limb centre funded by the American War Veterans in Pnom Penh was named Sethi Limb Centre, he got it changed, says Ramachandran. She also blasts the NGO's theory of the sculptor's role in the invention.

DR Mehta speaking to patients