SC asks Centre, Uttarakhand to respond to petition seeking guidelines on protection of hospital staff

The Supreme Court has asked the Centre and the Uttarakhand Government to respond to a petition seeking framing of guidelines on the protection of hospital staff across India, regardless of their qualification.

Acting on a petition filed by a girl, whose mother was allegedly raped and killed while working as an OPD assistant in a Uttarakhand hospital, a Bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud asked the respondents to spell out their respective stand on the issue.

She sought an order “to mandate a centralised alert in case a woman is reported to be missing and cannot be located within a reasonable time-frame”.

Alleging delay and other procedural lapses on the part of the Uttarakhand Police in lodging an FIR in connection with her mother’s rape and murder, the girl, who approached the top court through her maternal grandfather, also demanded an independent probe into the crime on the ground that the investigation carried out by the local police was not reliable.

She said her mother went missing in the evening of July 30 and her partly-decomposed body was found on August 8 near her apartment in Rudrapur in Udham Singh Nagar. The police lodged a missing report and an FIR belatedly on August 14, after a public outcry.

”It is pertinent to mention here that even the post-mortem report failed to substantiate any specific cause for the death of the deceased and squarely covered the things on the basis that due to the advanced stage of decomposition, it is not possible to make any definite comment regarding the presence or absence of any skin or visceral injury, which may have individually or collectively caused the death or contributed to the cause of the death,” the petitioner submitted.

Contending that a minor was entitled to compensation under the Uttarakhand Compensation Scheme for Women Victims/Survivors of Sexual Assault Other Crimes, 2022, the petition sought to highlight that no assistance had been provided to her or to her family members.