HYDERABAD: Terming the death of PG first-year student Dharavath Preethi of Kakatiya Medical College, Warangal as “terrible”, Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan dashed off a letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS), seeking a report on the anti-ragging measures and mechanism put in place in the university.
Preethi attempted suicide on February 22, due to alleged ragging by a senior student, Md Saif, and died while undergoing treatment at NIMS in Hyderabad on February 26. Taking a serious note of the incident, Raj Bhavan, under the instructions of the Governor, wrote a letter to the KNRUHS VC on Tuesday. The letter termed the death of Dr Preethi as terrible and called for a thorough inquiry into all possible angles to find out the truth.
The Governor’s office has also called for a detailed report on the standard operating procedures (SOP) in place to deal with incidents of harassment and ragging in the health university. The letter also sought to know the SOP manuals in place to deal with the duty hours of the medicos and the assistant professors and the functioning of CC cameras at medical colleges and hospitals. The issues like the functioning of the Grievance Redressal Cell, addressing the concerns of the victims, and evaluation of the feedback from the medicos and their working conditions were also mentioned in the letter.
Guv for strict implementation of anti-ragging laws in colleges
The letter further said that there appeared to be some loss of precious time in shifting the victim to the Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS). Instead, super speciality experts and required advanced medical equipment should have been moved to the MGM Hospital to provide the best possible treatment to Dr Preethi, it said.
The Governor called for the strict implementation of anti-ragging and anti-harassment laws in the medical colleges with a special focus on protecting the students, especially women medicos.
It also suggested strengthening the grievance redressal mechanism and creation of a student counselling cell headed by the HoD of the psychiatry wing in each medical college. The letter mentioned that the Governor directed the VC to create better awareness among the medicos and the faculty and effective strategies to prevent any such unfortunate incident in future.
The Governor called for a thorough inquiry to punish the culprits, while paying homage to Preethi, according to a release from Raj Bhavan.