Sufficient material available against doctors accused of abetting junior colleague's suicide: court

Mumbai, June 15 (PTI) Sufficient material was available for proceeding with trial against the three women doctors accused of abetting the suicide of their junior colleague Dr Payal Tadvi, a special court here has said.

Judge for SC/ST cases S M Tapkire on May 30 rejected discharge applications filed by the accused, who are out on bail. The judge also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on each of them for filing pleas which were "devoid of merit".

The detailed order became available on Saturday.

The investigating agency has recorded statements of more than 274 witnesses and collected a huge amount of electronic evidence, the court noted.

As the victim was a 26-year-old medical student, "necessary opportunity" should be given to the prosecution and complainant to prove their case, the court said.

The main contention of the accused doctors was that Tadvi was a subordinate student, and hence instructions given to her regarding mistakes or negligence in duty did not amount to intentional insult leading to abetment of suicide.

The deceased was already under mental stress and unable to cope with her educational work and duties, the accused claimed.

But the court said such "probable defence" cannot be considered at the pre-trial stage.

"However, the record reveals (that) sufficient material in regard to accusations against them is available to frame charges for alleged crime," said the judge.

The trial could not proceed because of the discharge applications, the court noted.

As the accused are medical officers and must be in good financial condition, considerable cost was required to be imposed on them to "deprecate" the practice of filing meritless discharge applications, the judge said.

"Thus, in the circumstance I felt the present discharge applications certainly devoids of merit and deserve to be declined by saddling a considerable cost amount on the accused," the court added.

The three doctors were arrested after Dr Tadvi, a post-graduate student attached to B Y L Nair Hospital here, allegedly hanged herself at her hostel room in March 2019.

Her family alleged that the accused ragged her and hurled casteist abuse as she belonged to a Scheduled Tribe.

The accused were booked under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, Anti-Ragging Act and section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian Penal Code. PTI AVI KRK