Mumbai: Six years ago, 26-year-old second-year MD student Payal Tadvi, on the receiving end of discrimination and constant humiliation at the hands of three upper-caste seniors, died by suicide.
The Mumbai police, which investigated the case, found a three-page ‘suicide note’ in which Tadvi had, in detail, described her ordeal and the failure of the medical institution T.N. Topiwala National College and B.Y.L. Nair Hospital, to stop the brutalities inflicted upon her and several other Dalit and Adivasi students.
In the suicide note, Tadvi named Bhakti Mehare, Ankita Khandelwal, and Hema Ahuja – her seniors at the gynaecology department in the medical school. She said they had harassed and humiliated her over her tribal identity. She also named Yi Ching Ling, the then-unit head of the gynaecology department at T.N. Topiwala National College and B.Y.L. Nair Hospital – where Tadvi was studying in 2019 – for not taking her complaint seriously.
A week ago, the special court hearing the case in Mumbai allowed the special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat’s application to add Yi as an accused in the case. Special Judge S.M. Tapkire, on February 28, issued summons to Yi and ordered:
“The impleaded/added accused Dr. Yi Ling Chung Chiang be tried together with the trio of charge-sheeted accused.”
The court directed that summons be issued to her and instructed the investigating officer to submit a report by the next date, March 20.
The court’s order came after the public prosecutor moved an application seeking criminal charges against Yi, who according to Tadvi (through her suicide letter) and her family had ignored a serious complaint of harassment. One might imagine that the state government was in agreement with this move. But on March 7, a notification was issued and Gharat was suddenly replaced with another senior public prosecutor. No explanation was given.
This opens the matter up to the speculation that the state government did not want Yi’s name added to the case, and Gharat was replaced because he did not seek the state government’s approval on this move.
Gharat, however, says such permission was not needed in the first place. “Once you are appointed as an officer of the court, it is your responsibility to decide the course of the trial. My application was based on the anti-ragging committee’s report and also the family’s position from the start,” Gharat says.
This is not the first case in which Gharat has been removed. Prior to this, he was suddenly shifted out of other cases involving BJP leaders like Nitish Rane, Narayan Rane, Navneet Rana, and Mohit Kamboj. “I had moved applications and sought strict actions in these cases too. It wasn’t surprising that I was removed from these cases when the Mahayuti government came into power,” Gharat says.
He expresses concern about the decision to remove him from Tadvi’s hearing. “The community (Bhil Tadvi tribe) to which Payal belonged rarely sees a woman reach higher education. She was a role model for many other children like her, but the system killed her,” he says.
Although Gharat was appointed as a special public prosecutor in the case by the state government, his name for the post was suggested by the Tadvi family and their lawyer. As per the rules under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, it is mandatory for the states to let the victim’s family have a say on the choice of the prosecutor. The Maharashtra state government too has issued a notification in 2016 allowing the victim and their family to have a say in the appointment of the public prosecutor. Tadvi’s mother, Abeda, had written a letter to the then tribal development minister Kagda Chandya Padvi (under the Mahavikas Aghadi government) requesting Gharat’s appointment.
Advocate Disha Wadekar, who is representing the family in the higher courts, says that the practice of the victim’s family choosing a lawyer in atrocity cases is very common and has helped prove atrocities in many cases. And in cases where the families have not been able to get their own lawyer, the cases have barely made any progress – “like, for instance, the institutional murder of Rohit Vemula at Hyderabad Central University,” Wadekar says.
Wadekar, along with another lawyer, Nihalsing Rathod, was appointed by the Rajasthan government to represent the state in the rape and subsequent suicide of a 17-year-old student. This appointment, Wadekar notes, also occurred through the family’s request. “Getting a perfectly qualified lawyer removed from the case would disrupt the trial,” Wadekar says.
With: Abeda Tadvi, a cancer survivor who has doggedly followed the case from the start and taken it up to the Supreme Court, has now written to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis demanding that Gharat be reappointed. “Advocate Gharat has been handling the case for 3-4 years now and has closely studied it. With him as the public prosecutor, we are hopeful that justice will be done… I request you to bring Advocate Gharat back into the case and allow him to handle it until justice is served,” Abeda Tadvi has written in the letter.
Courtesy: The Wire