JJ Hospital sweeper held for making lewd gestures at minor

Mumbai: The JJ Marg police has arrested a 45-year-old sweeper working at the state-run JJ Hospital for making lewd gestures at a minor. The police has claimed to have found during the investigation that he used to molest the hospital’s nurses in the past, along with harassing them and filming them while they were changing clothes in the hospital’s changing room.

The accused, identified as Nitin Waghela (45), was arrested after a minor girl, who was at the hospital with her ailing grandmother, filed a complaint against him.

The senior police inspector of the JJ Marg police station Shirish M. Gaikwad said, “The victim is a 17-year-old girl hailing from Jalgaon, who was accompanying her ailing grandmother. In the early hours of Saturday, when the victim was waiting outside the operation theatre, Waghela allegedly made obscene gestures at her.”

Initially, the victim ignored Waghela but he continued making lewd gestures past midnight. The victim narrated the incident to her aunt, who too was visiting the patient.

The two soon approached the administrative office of the hospital which suggested going to the police. “Waghela was not on duty at the time of the incident. He was known to roam around in the hospital premises and peep into the windows of the nurses’ changing room through the keyhole etc. Many nurses had warned him not to enter their changing rooms and washrooms without knocking but he would simply say “sorry” and continue such acts,” added Gaikwad.

Another source at the hospital confirmed the news saying, “Waghela would stay back at the hospital after work and molest females in dark and on stairs, he would touch them inappropriately, often taking advantage of the crowd at the hospital. But people here are often stressed about getting their treatments done and hence no one had bothered to register a complaint against him so far.”