Landmark: Mumbai businessman gets 6 months jail for abusing on-duty doctor

The complainant doctor had alleged that the 52-year-old man had used words like "bloody bitch" and "scroundel" and had claimed that the doctor was "sleeping with the management".

Dictating jail-term for the doctor, the Magistrate court noted, "Whenever such type of offences is committed against the women, it is against their right to sexual integrity, dignity. It is link to the right to the privacy. Every woman have right to self-determine her bodily affair and infringing on those can amount to the intrusion of privacy. In the present matter also, the accused has used those words to insult the dignity of the woman. He is in his 50s and should know the consequences of his act."

The history of the case goes back to November 14, 2017, when the mother of the businessman had been admitted at the Parsi General Hospital. As per the complaint, the lady doctor went to the ICU after she was informed that the relatives of the patient were creating a ruckus. It was then the man used the derogatory terms and alleged that she was sleeping with the management. The man had also accused the staff of negligence.

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As per the recently media report by the Times of India, at that time, the lady doctor had reported about the incident to her seniors. However, the incident got repeated after a week and the doctor lodged an FIR into the matter.

India Today adds that after the doctor lodged the complaint at Gaondevi Police Station, few other doctors in the Hospital, who were witnesses in the case, had also supported the claims made by the doctor.

However, the accused claimed in his defense that the witnesses of the colleagues of the doctor could not be taken into account and trusted as they were all "interested witnesses". However, the Magistrate Nadeem Patel opined that merely because the witnesses know each other, they cannot be claimed to be interested witnesses.

"Merely because the victim is working with colleague, they cannot be termed as an interested witness. Their evidence needs to be scrutinised with the great care and caution. However, their evidence cannot be thrown away merely because they are close relatives," observed the court.

Referring to the complaint of the accused that the statements of his relatives were not recorded by police, the Magistrate noted, "It is not case of the prosecution that incident was occurred in front of relatives of the patient. Therefore, if relatives are not present, there is no point in recording their statement."

"For the sake of argument, if it is assumed that one or two relatives of the patient were present on the spot, but their statement was not recorded by the investigating officer. Even then it is for the Investigating Officer to record the statement of the witnesses at the time of the investigation. If she has not recorded the statement of the some of the witnesses, then at the most it can be termed as faulty investigation and it will not fatal the case of the prosecution," the court was further quoted observing by India Today.

Although the accused had objected to the fact that no CCTV footage was submitted by the prosecution, the investigating officer informed the court that the place where the alleged incident had taken place, was not covered by CCTV.

Apart from this, the accused had mentioned in his statement that he had complained to the hospital as he had felt that the lady doctor and other staff were negligent in their duties. In fact, the accused had claimed that the hospital management had also issued a memo to the lady doctor on the basis of the complaint of negligence by the accused man.

However, noting that "This shows that he is not happy with the doctor," then court noted, "However, this itself will not give any right to the accused to abuse the lady doctor. Even for the sake of argument if it is assumed that she was negligent in her duty even then accused has no right to abuse her. At the most, he can file complaint which was done by him. Therefore, this will not affect the merit of the case. Hence, I find no force in this defence of the accused."

"He stated that she use to sleep with the management. These words addressed to the lady doctor in front of other doctors is certainly intended to insult her modesty," further noted the bench.

Meanwhile, after the court convicted the accused, the accused had prayed for leniency and the counsel for the man had claimed before the court that the incident had occurred in a spur of the moment as the mother of the accused was ill.

Refusing to believe his words, the court pointed out that the man had abused the doctor twice and this meant that it was done intentionally.

So, the bench refused to let him off on a bond of good behaviour and noted "it will send a wrong signal in society."

"As the offence is an insult to the dignity of women, the substantive sentence coupled with a fine will meet the ends of justice," the bench observed as it further fined the accused Rs 1,000.