3 doctors, accused of driving Mumbai’s Payal Tadvi to suicide, get bail

The Bombay high court on Friday granted bail to the three doctors attached to BYL Nair Hospital in Mumbai and arrested for allegedly driving a postgraduate student at the state-run hospital, Dr. Payal Tadvi, to kill herself.

The high court granted them bail on personal bonds of Rs 2 lakh each and one or two sureties of the same amount.

The high court has restrained them from leaving the city and ordered them to stay away from Nair Hospital as well.

The high court said that the licences of all three accused doctors to practise medicine shall remain suspended during the duration of the trial.

All three doctors – senior residents Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Meher and Ankita Khandelwal – have been ordered to attend the local police station every second day.

Dr Tadvi, 26, a second-year post-graduate gynaecology student at TN Topiwala National Medical College attached to BYL Nair Hospital, killed herself in her hostel room on May 22, 2019. A case was registered by the Agripada police after her parents complained that Dr Tadvi was constantly harassed by the three, merely because of having secured admission to the post-graduate medical course using benefit of reservation.

Dr Tadvi belonged to a Scheduled Tribe.

In a three-page suicide note that Dr Tadvi left behind, police said, she had also accused the three doctors of casteist slurs tageting her.

“I have tried a lot, come forward many times, spoke with madam about this but nothing has been done. I literally do not see anyway. I can only see THE END,” she said in the suicide note addressed to her parents. The note is part of a 1,200-page charge sheet filed by the police.

First Published: Aug 09, 2019 15:29 IST