Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan seeks thorough probe into Preethi's suicide

Hyderabad: Taking serious note of Dr Preethi's suicide, Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan has asked the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS) Vice Chancellor to conduct a thorough inquiry and called for a detailed report to deal with such incidents of harassment and ragging in the university campus.

The Governor wrote a letter to the Vice Chancellor on the suicide of post graduate medico. She termed the death of Dr. Preethi as terrible and needs a thorough inquiry from all possible angles to find out the truth. She has also called for a detailed report on the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in place to deal with such incidents of harassment and ragging in the university.

In the letter, the Governor also enquired about the SOP manuals in place to deal with the duty hours of the medicos and the Assistant Professors and the establishing and functioning of the CCTV cameras at the medical colleges and hospitals.

The issues like the functioning of the grievance redress cell, addressing the concerns of the victims, and evaluation of the feedback from the medicos and their working conditions were also highlighted in the letter from the Raj Bhavan.

She mentioned the loss of precious time in shifting the victim to the Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) hospital and suggested instead the super specialty experts and required advanced medical equipment should have been moved to the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial (MGM) hospital to give the best possible treatment to her.

She called for a report on the anti-ragging measures and mechanism in place under the control of the Vice Chancellor of the university. Governor also wanted strict implementation of the anti-ragging and anti-harassment laws in the medical colleges with a special focus on protecting the students, especially the women medicos. She also suggested strengthening of the grievance redressal mechanism and creation of a student counselling cell headed by the head of the psychiatry wing in each medical college.

She directed the Vice Chancellor to create better awareness among the medicos and the faculty and effective strategies to prevent any such unfortunate incident in the future.

The Governor called for a thorough inquiry to punish the culprits, while paying her homage to the victim Dr. Preethi, the official letter said.