Chennai: Corporate hospital employee molests sedated woman, held

CHENNAI: Police have arrested a lab technician at Apollo Speciality Hospitals, Perungudi, after a 30-year-old woman complained that he sexually abused her minutes before she was to undergo surgery.
Police booked G Dilli Babu, 21, of Gudiyatham near Vellore on charges of sexual harassment after the woman, a techie from Bengaluru, sent an email to the Chennai police commissioner’s office.
The woman had come to the hospital on June 4 with her father for knee surgery after an accident. On June 6, while she was on a bed in the operation theatre awaiting surgery, the woman said Dilli Babu stood behind her for a while and touched her inappropriately thinking she was unconscious.
Police said he did not know that she was given anesthesia only for the lower part of the body. She felt his touch on that part as well, doctors quoted the woman as saying. At the time, doctors were performing another surgery in the same room, but the woman was in no condition to call out, police quoted her as saying.
Later, after the surgery, she reported the matter to the authorities, but they told her this could not have happened in their hospital, the woman said in her complaint to police. The hospital initially said the woman was a pscyhiatric patient, but “we checked her medical records and found no such medical history. The accused was handed over to us,” said an investigating officer.
The woman had also written to Union minister of women and child development Smriti Irani about the abuse she underwent and sought government intervention.
Preetha Reddy, vice-chairman, Apollo Hospitals, said the patient told the doctor about the harassment but even before the inquiry could begin she had filed a police complaint. The employee has been placed under suspension. “We have a zero tolerance to harassment and put patient's safety first. We will take the strictest action possible as soon as the enquiry is completed”, she said.