Case Against 4 Resident Doctors In Surat For Ragging Junior Who Died By Suicide

Surat:

Police registered a case against four resident doctors of the Government Medical College (GMC) in Gujarat’s Surat on Tuesday for their alleged involvement in the ragging of a 30-year old first-year student, who died by suicide, officials said.

The FIR was registered against four second-year PG students of the GMC affiliated to New Civil Hospital after Harsh Pandya was found hanging by the ceiling of his hostel room on the morning of August 9, an official of Khatodara police station said.

The accused students — Nirali Vasave, Anuj Maheshwari, Dikshita Ghewaria and Hina Bhut — were suspended from the institute for six months on Monday after the institute’s anti-ragging committee found them involved in harassing 10 first year students, including Pandya.

The accused were booked under sections 127 (2), 352 and 54 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS) pertaining to wrongful confinement, intentional insult and abettor present at the scene of the crime, the police official said.

GMC Dean, Dr Jayesh Brahmbhatt said that an FIR was registered at the Khatodra police station against the four students found guilty by the institute’s anti-ragging committee following an incident of ragging in the institute’s microbiology department so that further legal action can be taken.

As per the complaint, second-year resident doctors are not permitted to assign any tasks to first-year resident doctors.

Despite this, the accused students had been harassing 10 first-year residents of the institute’s microbiology department for quite some time.

These four doctors subjected 10 of them, including Pandya, to humiliation and verbal abuse and lodged false complaints with the faculty, alleging that they were not performing their duties.

On August 5, the seniors summoned these first-year students to the microbiology department’s serology lab via WhatsApp messages.

They detained them there illegally for two hours, subjecting them to continuous mental harassment and humiliating them with crude remarks, stated the police complaint by the institute.

A high-level committee formed on Sunday to look into the matter had also issued show-cause notices to the microbiology department head Dr Sumaiya Mulla, and three other faculty members — Dr Sangeeta Rajde, Dr Yogita Mistry and Dr Latika Purohit.

The anti-ragging committee had held a marathon meeting from 8.30 pm on Sunday to 4 am Monday, recording statements of senior resident doctors, faculty members, technicians and cleaners of the microbiology department based on complaints of nine first-year resident doctors and the father of the deceased.

According to the committee, there was no evidence of physical abuse or that death resulted from such abuse.

Health Minister Pansheriya on Sunday directed the college authorities to look into the matter urgently and carry out a probe to ascertain the exact reason behind the victim’s extreme step. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)