A surgeon from a central government hospital in Delhi operated on a 32-year-old woman in Hyderabad on August 20, sitting more than 1,600 km away.
Dr Anup Kumar did the robotic telesurgery from Gurugram. The news agency ANI announced it on August 20, 2026. Peoples Feed found the same agency copy on several sites and no independent account.
That announcement called Dr Anup Kumar the first surgeon from a government institution in India to do a urological telesurgery. The patient was treated at Preeti Kidney and Urology Hospital in Hyderabad.
What Dr Anup Kumar Did on August 20
Dr Anup Kumar is a professor in the department of urology and renal transplant at Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. The hospital’s published faculty list names Dr Pawan Vasudeva as head of that department.
The operation was a modified Lich-Gregoir ureteric reimplantation, the announcement said. That procedure reattaches the tube that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder.
The system Dr Anup Kumar used was described only as an advanced surgical robotic system. Its maker was not named. The announcement reported no delay a surgeon could feel across the link.
Telesurgery in India is no longer rare. SS Innovations, which makes the SSi Mantra robot, said on September 10, 2026 that 188 telesurgeries had been done on its platform by August 31.
Whether that platform carried the operation Dr Anup Kumar performed is not stated in any document Peoples Feed could find.
Safdarjung Has Run Free Robotic Surgery Since 2018
Safdarjung Hospital’s urology and renal transplant department dates its robotic surgery to 2018. The department says every operation it does, including complex robotic and transplant surgery, is free.
Dr Harsh Vardhan, then the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, dedicated the robotic surgery facility on November 2, 2019.
A Press Information Bureau release that day called Safdarjung the first central government hospital in India to run robotic surgery free for the poor. By that date Dr Anup Kumar had done 25 robotic surgeries, the same release records.
The hospital runs 21 modular operation theatres, two of them dedicated round-the-clock renal transplant theatres. A national robotic training centre for young doctors was already running there by then.
The department where Dr Anup Kumar works reported 3,067 major surgeries in 2024, along with more than 14,204 minor procedures.
What this means for you: If you are waiting for urology surgery at Safdarjung Hospital, nothing about your own operation changes because of August 20. Telesurgery there is a demonstration so far, and the hospital has published no date for offering it as a service.
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