Four senior doctors of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation Medical Education Trust (AMC MET)-affiliated Narendra Modi Medical College in Maninagar have been suspended for their role in ragging activities directed at junior doctors. The junior doctors suffered mental agony during the horrific ragging episodes; accounts of them being forced to write prescriptions 700 times and denied food for up to seven days were among the harsh forms of torture.
A detailed examination of the complaints filed with the Medical College Council, which described the terrifying experiences junior doctors had at the hands of their older colleagues, led to the suspension order. Two women and two men are among the suspended doctors; they were all found guilty of committing the ragging episodes that took place on the medical college property.
A formal complaint lodged on May 16 with Dr. Ashish Patel, the Head of the Department, revealed the suffering of the junior doctors at Narendra Modi Medical College. Once the complaint was received, Dr. Patel stepped in to try to settle the issue internally by calling a meeting between the senior and junior doctors. Three days later, however, the junior doctors took the matter to the Medical College Dean, Dr. Deepti Shah, when the ragging episodes continued despite promises of an end to such behaviour.
Dr. Shah requested a meeting of the Medical College Council to discuss the serious claims of mental suffering and ragging that the older doctors were subjecting the junior doctors to. The four senior doctors—Drs. Vraj Vaghani, Shivani Patel, Aneri Nayak, and Karankumar Parejia—were suspended after the meeting after a discussion of the degree of their ragging methods.
The older doctors used techniques of punishment that veered into psychological and physical abuse. These included making the junior doctors write hundreds of prescriptions and telling them to fast for long stretches of time. Such disgusting ragging defies not only medical ethics but also a flagrant contempt for the welfare and dignity of other medical practitioners.
The four senior doctors being suspended highlights how seriously the authorities are taking cases of harassment and ragging in medical facilities.
