Mumbai: No cases of ragging have been reported in the King Edward Memorial (KEM) hospital and Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College except in 2010 when a lone instance was recorded.
The surprising data has been provided by the hospital management in response to an application made under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
According to the RTI response, the management had suspended 18 students in this lone incident of 2010. These medical students were accused of ragging their juniors.
“In 2010, we had received a complaint pertaining to ragging against 18 students. All these students were suspended from the college and were later handed over to the Bhoiwada police for further probe,” the response reads.
This data was sought by activist Shakeel Ahmed Shaikh, who urged the hospital management to provide information on the number of ragging cases reported in the hospital and medical college from 2010 till 2019.
The official data states there has been not a single complaint of ragging since then. “After 2010, there have been no complaints pertaining to ragging of students or junior doctors till date,” the data reads.
The response further states that its Anti-Ragging Committee meets at least once in a year. “Meetings are held as usual every year. Also, we keep changing the posters with anti-ragging messages annually,” the response reads.
Even as the hospital management has patted its own back, activist Shaikh suspects the ‘authenticity’ of the data provided.
“I think something is wrong in this data as the response is too vague and ambiguous. There are chances that the management would have not provided accurate details,” Shaikh said.
“The reason why I say so is that I had come across a news item last year, which claimed that an initial ragging complaint was disposed of by terming it to be a false plaint.
Thus, I think there might be several such incidents but the students would have been silenced maybe because the management does not want to bring disrepute to its hospital,” Shaikh added.
