New Delhi, Nov. 2: From home for the sick to hub of abuse.
Yesterday?s arrest of a sweeper for raping a patient?s attendant in Vidyasagar Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Sciences has raised uncomfortable questions on whether the capital?s hospitals are safe to work in or visit for treatment.
The rape ? in a bathroom where the 25-year-old sweeper, Dharampal, is said to have called his unsuspecting 20-year-old victim last month ? is the latest in a series of sexual assaults that have rocked Delhi hospitals.
Last year, a nurse at the private Shanti Mukand hospital in east Delhi was raped by a ward boy while she was attending to a comatose patient. Her right eye was gouged out.
Reputed hospitals like Safdarjung have not escaped the trend. In May this year, a 16-year-old girl who had gone to see her doctor, Ravi Kumar, an intern at Safdarjung Hospital, was taken to the doctors? hostel and raped for two days.
On September 23 last year, a 13-year-old girl who had gone to see a doctor at the Holy Angel Hospital in south Delhi?s Vasant Vihar was raped. Her 55-year-old doctor, V.K. Nigam, was arrested.
If the rapes have made headlines, equally discomfiting is that hospitals have sheltered the alleged rapists. J.S. Gambhir, a doctor in a private hospital, was arrested in May for allegedly harbouring city-based businessman Sajal Jain, main accused in the New Year?s eve gangrape case. The victim committed suicide.
But it was the sensational daylight rape of a student of the Maulana Azad Medical College that brought into focus the insecurity of women in the capital. The MBBS student was in November 2002 taken to Khooni Darwaza, a monument on the busy Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg and a stone?s throw from the medical college, and raped by three youths at knifepoint.
The rape of the fourth year student had come close on the heels of the rape of a Swiss diplomat in the poorly lit car park of the Siri Fort auditorium just after a movie.
Following these incidents, the Delhi government issued guidelines to hospitals to ensure security by using trained manpower and closed-circuit cameras.
Although the government made it clear that the safety of women employees and patients and their relatives is the hospital?s responsibility, most government hospitals are yet to take proper steps.
Most of them employ private security guards with virtually little or no police verification. Poorly lit corridors, dark car parks and failure of hospital officials to stick to regulations about patients being accompanied by relatives during examination have added to the insecurity. But then, turning a blind eye to security of employees and patients works out to be economical for the city?s mushrooming hospitals.
In some hospitals like AIIMS, however, there is sufficient police presence. More than 500 securitymen are stationed on the premises. Indraprastha Apollo, a private hospital, has special lady security supervisors and guards. In addition, there are closed-circuit TV cameras all over and doorframe metal detectors.
At the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, there is tight security at the entrance. A guard has been deployed in each ward and at the nurses? quarters.
