New Delhi: The medical fraternity cannot be touched, the Supreme Court observed on Monday, while cancelling the bail of Shiv Sena corporator Ramesh Mhatre, who was accused of assaulting doctors at a municipal hospital in the Thane district of Maharashtra on July 6.
Mhatre had been granted bail by the Bombay High Court.
The SC bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta passed the order while hearing an appeal by the Maharashtra government against the HC order. The corporator has been directed by the SC to surrender within three days.
“The message should go out loud and clear that the medical fraternity cannot be touched. They serve people and cannot be attacked in this manner,” the Court observed as reported by timesnow.in.
The bench noted that a similar incident involving the same party had been reported after the Mhatre episode.
Appearing for Mhatre, senior advocate Siddharth Dave said two witnesses had already been examined. The complainant, a woman doctor, is to be examined on October 3. The trial has started and there is no obstruction, he said.
The bench said the Mhatre incident also shows that he was involved in 19 criminal cases including the present matter.
Dave argued that all these were politically motivated and he was acquitted in 18 of them.
On August 7, the high court granted bail to Mhatre and ordered that the trial be fast-tracked and completed in a time-bound manner. It also granted bail to the four other accused in the alleged assault case that had triggered a massive outrage in July.
On July 6, Mhatre and the other accused gathered at the hospital and assaulted the doctors after an argument over the alleged delay in treatment. CCTV footage of the incident went viral.
