Mumbai: A Mumbai Special Court remanded till May 31 the three women doctors arrested in connection with suicide of medico Payal Tadvi, a law official said, Wednesday.
Bhakti Meher, Hema Ahuja and Ankita Khandelwal were arrested Tuesday and Wednesday, said Nitin Satpute, lawyer for the Tadvi family.
Arguing for the remand, Satpute told Additional Sessions Judge RM Sadrani there was a possibility of the case being one of murder since some injury marks were found on the victim’s body, including her neck and private parts, as per the preliminary autopsy report. He said the alleged ‘ligature’ marks, as mentioned in the autopsy report, pointed to Tadvi being killed and accordingly all the accused should be booked for murder.
The police also sought custodial interrogation of the three doctors to know whether there was any suicide note left by Tadvi and if it was misplaced or hidden by them. They also said that the mobile phones of the accused have been seized and they needed more time to recover the WhatsApp chat messages with the victim, among other things.
However, Aabad Ponda and Sandeep Bali, appearing for the three doctors, argued that the (accused) medicos were unaware of the deceased’s caste and she was only pulled up for her performance without any intentions to harm her.
Moreover, they said the room in which Tadvi was found hanging May 22 was locked from inside and nobody had access to it. And hence some family issue could have led to her suicide, they argued.
A second year Post-Graduate student of Gynaecology, Tadvi, 26, allegedly hanged herself in her hostel room, May 22 at the government-run BYL Nair Hospital. Her family claimed she was driven to suicide by casteist remarks on her Muslim tribal background and other forms of personal and professional harassment.
IANS