30 PG medicos from JIPMER took psychiatric counselling in 2025: RTI

Puducherry: A total of 30 postgraduate medical students had to seek psychiatric consultation at Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, a Right to Information (RTI) reply has revealed.

The RTI was filed by activist J. Swamidass, who shared the data on his X (formerly Twitter) handle. Filing the RTI application with the Department of Psychiatry of JIPMER, Swamidass had sought to know the number of postgraduate students who took psychiatric counselling in 2025- from January till December.

In response, the Department informed, "30 post graduate medical students (MD/MS) took Psychiatric consultation in the year 2025 (January 2025- December 2025)."

Queries were also raised regarding duty hours, weekly offs, and number of students who quit the course in 2025. However, in response to these queries, the Department said that it did not have the information.

Sharing the document online, Swamidass accused the institute for toxic work culture due to inhumane duty hours and instances of ragging. He said, "South India’s toxic center JIPMER had seen 30 PG students took psychiatric counseling in the year 2025 ( Refer point 6) which shows the level of cruel inhumane duty hours and residency ragging by JR2 & JR3 with blessing of insensitive sleeping HoDs Dear parents of PG students & Fellow Indians please don’t get deceived by the brand value and useless NIRF ranking of JIPMER."

Alleging ragging instances at the institute, he further added, "PG ragging in JIPMER is very harsh, almost in all clinical departments, especially in Ortho. In Ortho, no JR can get a week off for the first 180 days of the ragging period and juniors are never allowed to eat brush and bathe. Also Ortho JRs have twice 36 hours cruel inhumane duty against residency scheme guidelines. HoD does nothing to alleviate the suffering. All done by senior PGs. Dear ortho JRs & other JRs of JIPMER if your HoD / consultant or any faculty or senior humiliates/yells at you in front of nurses, please file a complaint in CPGRAM as well with the national human rights commission. Please update your parents about illegal duty hours & human rights violations. Please share live location to parents every 6 hours which would be an evidence for 24 to 36 duty hours You can file FIR on HoD & Dean under BNS 146. Please keep parents updated about no week off and 2 hours sleep , one meal toxic culture Or else file a FIR in nearby police station under BNS 352 for intentional insult which will land the abuser 2 years in Jail Please try to record the abuse. Let's eliminate toxicity from medical education by sending law breakers and abusers to Jail."

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that as per a previous RTI filed by Shri Swamidass on 20.03.2025, from 2020 to 2024, altogether 276 PG students quit JIPMER, and 12 PG students were admitted to the Psychiatric Ward for depression/stress-related issues, 200 students took psychiatric counselling.

Also Read: RTI exposes gruelling duty hours, burnout crisis among resident doctors at AIIMS, JIPMER, AFMC