Payal Tadvi suicide case: Bail plea hearing of 3 accused doctors adjourned to June 10

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The hearing on the bail plea of the three accused doctors in Payal Tadvi suicide case has been adjourned to Monday, June 10. 

The three senior doctors – Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehere and Ankita Khandelwal – were arrested last week on charges of abetment to suicide of their junior colleague Dr Payal Tadvi by harassing and making casteist remarks against her. The three doctors are attached to the B Y L Nair Hospital in South Mumbai. 

The three doctors have been booked under the Atrocities Act, the Anti-Ragging Act and the IT Act and Section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the IPC. They were remanded to judicial custody till June 10 by a special court. The trio had approached a sessions court for bail on Monday. In their bail applications, the three have claimed that they never made any remarks on Tadvi's caste and were in fact not even aware about her caste.

Twenty-six-year-old Payal Tadvi ended her life on May 22 after allegedly facing casteist slurs. Tadvi's family also accused the doctors of insulting her for belonging to a scheduled tribe. She and her family had approached the hospital authorities with complaints of the alleged ragging. Tadvi's friends had appealed to the authorities to take stringent administrative and penal action against the accused. 
The Mumbai Crime Branch is probing the case, which had triggered a wave of protests across the country. 

Payal Tadvi belonged to a Muslim tribal family of Jalgaon. She was a second-year post-graduate student in obstetrics and gynaecology and had earlier served in the tribal areas of Gadchiroli.  The 25-year-old Tadvi had joined the hospital on May 13, 2018. For his part, State cabinet minister of medical education Girish Mahajan on Tuesday said that strong action will be taken against the accused.