Mumbai: A Sessions court has reserved order on the bail application of the three female doctors arrested for abetting the suicide of Dr Payal Tadvi at Nair Hospital. The court is likely to pass an order Monday.
Abad Ponda, counsel for the accused doctors - Hema Ahuja, Bhakti Mehare and Ankita Khandelwal – argued, “There is an intention in every crime but in this case, the three accused had no intention to kill or make Dr Tadvi commit suicide. No suicide letter has been found on the deceased therefore, the aiding and abetting section of the IPC cannot be attributed to the accused.
Advocate Ponda also submitted the WhatsApp chats to the court, indicating how negligent Dr Tadvi was in her duties. “She used to write fake blood pressures of patients and also make her colleagues negligent in their duties,” he said. “The three accused studied harder to become doctors and the job of a doctor is to save the lives of the people and not kill them. The accused’s lives have already been ruined. They have been expelled from college and nobody will marry them due to this stigma,” argued advocate Ponda.
He argued that the accused did not know Dr Tadvi’s caste and never made casteist remarks about her. However, special public prosecutor Raja Thack-eray vehemently opposed the application. “The accused’s counsel always argues that the accused are doctors and women and that their lives have been ruined. But the court should consider that the deceased was also a doctor, a woman and she lost her life. Her mother and husband lost their loved one.”
“The accused knew which caste the deceased belonged to. It could be easily found that the room allotted to Dr Tadvi was under the reserved category and therefore, the accused cannot say they didn’t know which caste she belonged to,” advocate Thackeray said.
He requested the court not to give bail to accused because the investigation was in its crucial stage.
