Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan asked the Vice-Chancellor of the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS) to carry out a thorough inquiry into the suicide of a woman medical student, who ended her life following alleged harassment by her senior. The first-year postgraduate student of a medical college, allegedly attempted suicide at a state-run hospital in Warangal district on February 22 after being "harassed" by her senior in the same college.
Dr Dharavathi Preethi died at state-run NIMS hospital in Hyderabad while undergoing treatment on February 26. The senior student, a male doctor, was arrested on February 24. Taking a serious note of the tragic incident, the Raj Bhavan wrote a letter to the Vice-Chancellor of the KNRUHS, a release from the Raj Bhavan said.
The letter termed the death of the medical student as terrible, adding it needs a thorough inquiry from all possible angles to find out the truth. The Governor called for a thorough inquiry to punish the culprits, while paying her homage to the victim, it said.
The Governor's office has also called for a detailed report on the Standard Operating Procedures in place to deal with such incidents of harassment and ragging in the health sciences university, it said.
The letter also enquired about the SOP manuals in place to deal with the duty hours of medicos and the Assistant Professors and the establishing and functioning of CC cameras at the medical colleges and hospitals.
The issues like functioning of the Grievance Redress Cell, addressing the concerns of victims, evaluation of the feedback from the medicos and their working conditions were also highlighted in the letter from the Raj Bhavan.
The letter also called for a report on the anti-ragging measures and mechanism in place under the control of the vice chancellor of the university.
The Governor called for the strict implementation of the anti-ragging and anti-harassment laws in the medical colleges with special focus on protecting the students, especially the women medicos.
It had also suggested the strengthening of the grievance redressal mechanism and creation of a student counselling cell headed by the HoD of the Psychiatry wing in each medical college.
The letter mentioned that the Governor directed the Vice-Chancellor to create better awareness among the medicos and the faculty and effective strategies to prevent any such unfortunate incident in future.