"I Was Harassed All Over Again”: Chandigarh Medical College Sexual Assault Survivor

GMCH-32 doctor, who was allegedly sexually assaulted by an OT technician claimed that she is being made to run in every direction to get her side of the story out in public. The 27-year-old alleged on Friday that she had to deal with “insensitivity” on part of her own medical college, the internal committee of which is conducting an inquiry into the case.

Meanwhile, despite the police complaint filed on June 28, the OT technician accused of sexual harassment has neither been dismissed from duty nor arrested.  The doctor of the anaesthesia department at the hospital has claimed that the sexual harassment committee has been putting up “irrelevant questions” to delay the process.

As per reports, the doctor was allegedly sexually harassed on June 27 by an OT technician of the same medical college in broad daylight. The accused, who is identified as Kamleshwar, is a resident of New Chandigarh Mullanpur in Mohali.

According to the initial DDR filed at the Sector 34 station, the survivor had gone to the storeroom to fetch medications after 6 pm when she was grabbed and molested by the accused. The OT technician gave her a death threat if she mentioned the incident to anyone.

A complaint was filed immediately after the incident in the same evening and an FIR was lodged the following day only after the survivor approached SSP, UT. Eventually, when the police didn’t initiate any action, doctors from the department marched to the police station. Following that, the police began tracking the suspect’s phone number.

The survivor told The Indian Express on Friday that the internal committee seems “interested in digging up the events of the ongoing legal actions” taken up by her rather than “proceeding with the inquiry sincerely”.

The doctor submitted a complaint to the Director Principle of GMCH-32 claiming that the inquiry committee was harassing her.

“I had mentioned my name and my post as an anaesthesia student in my application. Yet the committee members seemed not to be aware of the same and asked if I am a BSC student of a doctor. The notice served to me also referred to me as a BSC third-year student,” her letter reads.

The survivor alleged that the committee even asked her to narrate the whole event verbally for the record “forcing her to relive that horrible experience” and  “negated the written statement” submitted by her.

“They forced me to talk about it in Hindi and Hindi only. I felt like I was being harassed all over again, by a bench of people who were sitting there and judging me for it,” she told the publication.

When she did narrate the “whole chain of events” in the police station she was reportedly asked if she “wanted justice or not”.