The RSS-affiliated student organisation Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) staged a protest at Kakatiya Medical College in Warangal on Monday, February 27, over the suicide of a postgraduate medical student allegedly due to harassment by a senior named MA Saif. The woman, identified as Preethi Dharavath, was a first year postgraduate student in the Department of Anaesthesiology at Kakatiya Medical College. She died by suicide allegedly after being harassed by her senior from the same college, Mohammad Abdul Saif Ali (27). Matwada police booked Saif under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and relevant sections of the Prohibition of Ragging Act and The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Preethi passed away on Sunday night at Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) in Hyderabad, where she had been undergoing treatment for five days. Soon after her passing, ABVP members protested in the streets of Warangal demanding justice for Preethi’s family.
Carrying ABVP flags and raising slogans, the protesters marched towards Kakatiya Medical College in Warangal but were stopped by the police at the main gate. An argument broke out between the protesters from ABVP and the policemen. As the protesters tried to barge into the campus, police detained them and shifted them to a police station. The ABVP members demanded the suspension of KMC principal Mohan Das, and Head of the Department of Anaesthesiology Nagarjuna Reddy.
Meanwhile in Hyderabad, tension prevailed at NIMS as Preethi's family refused to allow her body to be shifted to Gandhi Hospital for autopsy till the government explained the cause of her death and suspended the head of the department and the principal at her college.
Leaders of some opposition parties and student groups tried to stop the ambulance carrying Preethi’s body to Gandhi Hospital, with the intention of taking the body to Pragathi Bhavan instead, the official residence of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. Police detained many such protesters. Preethi’s body was later shifted to Gandhi Hospital, and handed over to her family after the autopsy. Her family took her body to her native village in the Jangaon district, where the last rites will be performed on Monday.
With IANS inputs