Payal Tadvi suicide case: Bombay HC grants bail to 3 women doctors

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, August 9

The Bombay High Court on Friday granted bail to three doctors from Mumbai’s BYL Nair Hospital for allegedly abetting the suicide of their colleague Payal Tadvi.

Releasing them on bail of Rs 2 lakh each, Judge Sadhana Jadhav of the Bombay High Court said the three doctors—Hema Ahuja, 28, Bhakti Mehare, 26, and Ankita Khandelwal, 27,—could remain in public domain with this stigma. All three are third-year resident doctors while Tadvi was their junior.

The court ordered that the doctors to report to the crime branch office every alternate day till charges were framed in the case. They cannot leave the city without court permission and their licences of medical practice would be suspended till conclusion of trial, the judge ruled in her order.

The trio has also been barred from entering BYL Nair Hospital and Topiwala Medical College.

Tadvi hanged herself in her hostel room at the hospital’s premises on May 23 this year.

The three who are accused of harassing Tadvi on the basis of her caste were arrested on a complaint filed by the victim’s relatives.

The doctors have been booked under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections under the Maharashtra Prohibition of Ragging Act and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.