Payal Tadvi was a second year post-graduate medical student attached to BYL Nair Hospital in Mumbai.
Months after the suicide of Payal Tadvi, a Mumbai-based doctor who killed herself over alleged harassment and casteist abuse by senior colleagues, an RTI reply has revealed that the hospital had received four ragging complaints in the past five years but met the students only once.
"The Anti-Ragging Committee received its first complaint from two MBBS students in 2014. The committee again received two ragging complaints in January 2015 from a first-year microbiology resident doctor. Subsequently, another complaint was received in March 2015 from a second-year physiology doctor," said BYL Nair Hospital in a response to a Right To Information (RTI) application filed by activist Shakeel Ahmed Shaikh.
The RTI revealed that the panel met the grieving students on only one occasion - in August 2017.
The hospital had also received another complaint in October 2018 via the anti-ragging toll-free number.
"We had suspended two students for six months from the hostel of our hospital. Two other students, who ragged juniors, were suspended from the hostel permanently," the official response added.
The hospital had claimed that it holds regular meetings to sensitise students about tough ragging laws.
"The hospital's Anti-Ragging Committee has conducted 21 meetings since August 2013 to discuss either the complaints or requests by the accused students or parents, apart from formal discussions on plans to sensitise the students," it had said earlier.
Payal Tadvi, who belonged to the Scheduled Tribe community, allegedly killed herself in her hostel room at BYL Nair Hospital in Mumbai on May 22. Photos of the purported suicide note left behind by her mentions that three senior women doctors, arrested in the case, used to hurl casteist abuses and intimidate her.