The police in Rajasthan’s Churu district launched an investigation into the messages exchange between the staff members of a private hospital on a WhatsApp group. The members were discussing not attending to the patients of minority community suffering from Covid-19, the police said.
The owner of the hospital had apologised for the WhatsApp conversation and also said that the messages are of the month of April when cases of Tablighis were high in number.
The screenshots of the message exchange between two women working at Srichand Baradiya Rog Nidan Kendra in Sardarshahar town of the district were widely circulated after which the police took notice and a complaint was lodged on Friday. A formal FIR was lodged against the accused on Sunday under Section 153A (attack upon any religion) and 505 (Statements conducing to public mischief) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and relevant sections of violation of Disaster Management Act.
“FIR was registered today against three persons which includes a doctor, a lab technician and a comp under after preliminary investigation the conversation was found biased against a particular region,” Mahendra Dutt Sharma, station house officer of Sardarshahar police station, said on Sunday.
Dr Sunil Choudhary, who runs the Srichand Baradiya Rog Nidan Kendra in Sardarshahar apologised through a post on social media.
“I apologise for the chats which are getting viral on social media. Me and my staff members don’t want to hurt sentiments of any religion. In future my staff would not give you any chance of complaint,” Choudhary said.
One of the messages exchanged between the staff of hospital read, “I take oath that from tomorrow we will not do X-ray of Muslim patients.”
Another message reads, “We should stop attending to Muslim patients.”
