Hubballi: Merely a month after Payal Tadvi, a medical student in Mumbai ended life owing to harassment from three senior doctors on basis of her caste, a shocking incident of yet another medical student ending life has come to light. Even this case seems to have developed a caste angle.
Omkar Baridabad, (30), a resident of Hubballi was studying at Rohtak Medical College in Haryana. He was found hanging in his hostel room on the night of June 13.
It is now said that the medical student was dejected after continued comments made by his HoD against him in reference to his caste. Sources say that HoD Geetha Gathwala had not signed his thesis for a long time and had often passed comments on him for being a reserved candidate. It is believed that minutes before ending life he had met the HoD for one last time and urged her to sign the thesis.
It is said that Omkar was often made a scapegoat and two-years-ago he was forcefully held responsible in an infant missing case reported in the hospital.
“The HoD and other doctors asked Omkar to take the blame of infant going missing from the ward on him and they will help him later to get out of the case. Believing them Omkar was agreed to be an accused in the case. But as the days went by, the police and family of infant started harassing Omkar. His repeated request to the HoD and other heads in the college went unheard,” a student told The New Indian Express.
It is said that after the HoD started stepping back from the infant case, the fellow PG students had staged protest in the medical college in Rohtak demanding justice for Omkar.
“These incidents may have made Geeta hold grudge against Omkar,” a student opined.
What was heart-wrenching was that Omkar dressed himself up in a new Sherwani that he purchased to wear during his sister’s wedding and he hanged himself keeping all the gifts he had purchased for her, next to him.
Soon after the news of Omkar’s death spread, students gathered outside the residence of the HoD and demanded her arrest.
Geeta Gathwala has been booked under section 306 of IPC and she was suspended by medical college authorities on Saturday.
