A 27-year-old pregnant Muslim woman in Calcutta was allegedly refused treatment by a doctor who told her she would not treat “Mohammedan” patients in the wake of the terror attack on tourists in Kashmir.
The doctor allegedly said people from the patient’s religion were killing people from hers.
The pregnant woman, who was visiting the gynaecologist for the fifth check-up on Thursday afternoon, was silent during the interaction but later called the doctor, who iterated that she was not going to treat a Muslim patient.
The woman’s husband has lodged a complaint with Maheshtala police station, on the south-western fringes of Calcutta. He also wrote to the state medical council.
The doctor refuted the allegations when The Telegraph called her on Saturday. She said she was being defamed and threatened a defamation suit against the patient and her family.
The doctor and the patient are both residents of an upscale housing complex in
Maheshtala.
The Telegraph is not naming any of the involved parties because of the sensitive nature of the allegations.
Instances of abuse of Muslims following the attack in Pahalgam have been rampant. Instead of directing their anger at insurgents, many have chosen Indian Muslims as targets after the dastardly crime.
“The doctor had herself asked my wife to come to her flat as we live in the same complex. When she heard my wife’s full name, the doctor told her she won’t treat Mohammedan patients. My wife could not understand what the doctor was saying because she never expected her to say such a thing,” said the husband.
The family thinks the doctor knew the woman by her first name and not her religious identity.
“My wife asked the doctor if she was saying that she won’t examine her at home, but the doctor again said she won’t treat Muslim patients,” the husband, an optometrist, told The Telegraph.
“She told my wife that people of our religion were killing people from her religion,” he said.
The woman, a homemaker, who went to the doctor with her three-year-old daughter, was so shocked that she could not respond to the doctor at that moment. She came back and took her daughter to a mall. Later, when she returned home, she was still fuming at the insult. She called the doctor.
“My wife told her that she felt insulted at what the doctor told her. She told her she was a patient, and to a doctor a patient has no religion. The doctor still insisted that she would not treat a Muslim patient,” the man said.
A member of the state medical council said it would be unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat a patient.
An officer of Diamond Harbour police district said they had forwarded the complaint to the state medical council and the state health department.
“We will need a nod from the council before we can take any action against the doctor,” said the officer.
The woman’s sister-in-law, a lawyer at Calcutta High Court, said she would visit the police station again with a request to convert the general diary into an FIR.
“If the police decline to do so, we will approach the court. This is unconstitutional because my sister-in-law was discriminated on grounds of religion, which the Constitution prohibits,” she said.
The family said they never harped on their religious identity but this incident has made them feel more Muslim than ever before. “We never felt more Muslim than we are feeling now. We are now looking for a Muslim gynaecologist for my sister-in-law. She is in trauma,” said the lawyer.
The doctor told The Telegraph on Saturday: “Eighty per cent of my patients are Muslims. Will I say something that hurts me the most? I have also filed a complaint at Parnasree police station that I am being defamed.”