BENGALURU: An attender at the KR Puram Government Hospital was suspended on Friday by the District Health Officer (DHO) for allegedly taking pictures of women patients at the hospital. According to sources, a woman went to the hospital on Thursday with a complaint of chest pain. She was asked to undergo an ECG at the ICU by a doctor there. Patients who undergo ECG scans are required to remove all clothes from the top half of the body. After the woman lay down, the nurse who had accompanied her claimed there was a technical issue with the machine and said she had to call a male attender.
The woman protested this and asked if she could at least cover herself, but the nurse did not allow her to do so and said as the bulbs of the machine were on, she could not wear her T-shirt. After the male attender arrived, the woman heard a sound which sounded like a camera clicking a picture. The woman got up, saw a phone in the attender’s hand and snatched it from him.
The woman deleted her pictures from the phone and then informed her parents and husband, who had accompanied her, about the incident. Her husband found many such pictures of female patients in the phone. The woman then complained to the doctors at the hospital about the incident, but they allegedly played it down. The woman went to the hospital again on Friday and insisted that the doctors and hospital authorities take action.
When the doctors again tried to play down the incident, she retorted, “Should we wait to take action until someone is raped?” Eventually, the Taluk Health Officer (THO) prepared and submitted a report on the incident to the District Health Officer (DHO). The DHO confirmed to Express that the employee who took the pictures was Raghu, a Group D employee and he had been suspended. The woman has not filed any police complaint regarding the incident. A friend of the woman had posted a description of the incident on Facebook. The attender had been working at the hospital since 2014.