Srinagar, June 6, 2014: police have booked three senior officers of Health department including Director Health Services Kashmir for allegedly molesting a staff nurse posted in a primary health centre at Pahalgam in Islamabad. A molestation case has been registered in Police Station ShaheedGunj in Srinagar against Director Health, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Islamabad, Block Medical Officer (BMO) Sallar, and Medical Superintendent (MS).
A case has been registered in Police Station ShaheedGunj vide FIR No 46 under section 354 (molesting a woman at working place) of the CrPc against DHSK DrSaleem-ur-Rehman, Chief Medical Officer Islamabad DrNazirShadad and BMO Saller Islamabad (Anantnag), Dr Arshad Tak. Officials at PS ShaheedGunj said a nurse, working in the Health department in South Kashmir, approached them Thursday evening with a complaint of molestation against these officials. “We received the complaint and registered a case. Investigation has been started,” a senior police official said.
Police said the incident, according to the complainant, took place in the office chamber of Dr Saleem-ur-Rehman on Thursday afternoon.
Police has booked Director Health, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Anantnag, Block Medical Officer (BMO) Sallar, and Medical Superintendent (MS) Seer for allegedly trying
“A case of sexual assault was registered against the Director Health and the other three. It was registered late Thursday evening after we received a complaint from the staff nurse,” Nisar Ahmad, Station House Officer at the police station said on June 6 Friday. “We have started investigations into the case,” he added.
According to the complainant’s account mentioned in the FIR, Director Health, Dr Saleem-ur-Rehman, had called the nurse to his office in Srinagar “with a plan to rape her.”
“I was called by the Director to his office. When I reached there to ask him why I had been called, he asked me to spend a night with him. He held my hand and pulled me towards him. I barely managed to escape,” reads the FIR. “…today, the Director had made a plan to rape me.”
Three months ago, the nurse alleged in her complaint, the BMO and the CMO had barged into her quarter at Pahalgam “while they were drunk, and tried to rape me.”
“The next day, they got my husband suspended and subsequently transferred on a false complaint,” she has said, adding that she was transferred to Seer, where the “MS tried to rape me at the behest of Director, the CMO and the BMO.”
Before approaching the police, the complainant has said that she raised the issue with several politicians and ministers including National Conference patron Farooq Abdullah.
“On listening to my ordeal, he (Farooq) asked the Health Minister to look into the matter. But the Health Minister called me to Jammu, and there he told me that he can’t act against his CMO and BMO,” she says.
“I kept mum over the incident, till Director Health crossed all limits by having made a plan to rape me,” she further said.
Pertinently the incident has surfaced barely five months after a case of sexual assault on a lady doctor was registered against former puppet Minister of State for Health Shabir Ahmad Khan.