HANAMKONDA: Kakatiya Medical College (KMC) second-year post-graduate student Md Saif was formally arrested by the Mattewada police on Friday. He allegedly started harassing Dharawath Preethi since December 2022, a month after she joined PG Anaesthesia. According to Warangal Commissioner of Police A V Ranganath, Saif was shifted to Khammam Jail after being produced before the IIIrd Judicial First Class Magistrate in Warangal.
Disclosing the details to the media, Ranganath stated that there was a culture of senior students bullying their juniors in KMC like in other medical colleges. Citing an example of bullying, the CP said that senior students insisted on their juniors addressing the former as ‘Sir’ and Saif particularly targeted Preethi with his high-handed behaviour. His harassment grew after Preethi pointed out Saif’s negligence in properly inserting an endotracheal tube in a patient in MGM Hospital in December 2022, said Ranganath.
Saif also made fun of the mistakes made by Preethi in preparing the case-sheet of a patient during her visit to the Government Maternity Hospital on February 20, 2023. He posted it on the WhatsApp group of the PG students of the college with an intention to insult her.
Feeling humiliated by this, Preethi sent a message to Saif, asking him the reason for insulting her on a public domain. She warned him to mind his own business and asked him to complain to the Head of the Department (HOD) or the principal if there was any mistake on her part. Further enraged by her stand, Saif texted his fellow students not to extend cooperation to Preethi. Seniors as well as juniors started staying away from Preethi during duty hours. It was a kind of boycott. Preethi’s appeal to them to stand by her fell on deaf ears, according to Ranganath.
Following a complaint by her father, the Head of the Department of Anaesthesia spoke to Preethi and Saif separately. Later, the KMC principal warned Saif against troubling Preethi. Ranganath said that before attempting suicide, Preethi had called third-year PG student Sailesh and poured out her woes.
Sympathising with her, Sailesh told her that harassment was common in medical colleges and advised her to ignore them and move on. “We have collected all the conversations and messages from the mobile phones of Preethi and Saif. As per the evidence we have collected, there are indications that Saif deliberately targeted Preethi,” he said and ruled out religious angle to the incident.
During investigation into Preethi’s suicide attempt, police found half of Midazolam and Pentanol vials in the bottle pointing to the possibility of her injecting herself with these anaesthesia drugs. According to the CP, when the police examined Preethi’s mobile phone, they found that she searched in Google about the use of these emergency drugs kept in the MGM Hospital.“We collected the blood samples of Preethi from the NIMS where she is undergoing treatment and sent them to the Toxicology Lab for analysis,” he said.