A division bench of justice Abhay Oka and justice A Sayyed said: "Even if there is only a single policeman with arms, a sufficient number of policemen should be there in hospital premises, including woman policemen, so that attacks don't happen."
Police presence should be felt inside public hospitals to ensure that antisocial elements don't create any untoward situation or attack resident doctors, the Bombay High Court told the state government on Wednesday.
A division bench of justice Abhay Oka and justice A Sayyed said: "Even if there is only a single policeman with arms, a sufficient number of policemen should be there in hospital premises, including woman policemen, so that attacks don't happen."
Acting advocate general Rohit Deo agreed to the suggestion and told the court that it has been decided to post 28 policemen with weapons inside different hospitals in Mumbai. The number of policemen will vary and deployment will be based on security assessment. "There is already a severe shortage of policemen in Mumbai police, and thus policemen with weapons will be deployed judiciously," Deo said.
To this, the court said: "More often than not it so happens that relatives who accompany the patient and are standing outside the hospital gates create untoward situations. To avoid that, policemen should be on the move inside the hospital so that doctors feel safe. Moreover, hospitals in Mumbai are so huge that patients not only from the city but from other parts of India as well come for treatment, so there should be more policemen."
The court made these observations after it was told to the court that hospitals like JJ, St George, GT, and BYL Nair hospitals have only two policemen posted in them, while only four are posted in KEM hospital. Responding to this, the court had said: "If this is the situation at hospitals in Mumbai, then it would be worse in the rest of Maharashtra. If something is not done, then we will direct the Mumbai police commissioner to increase police deployment."
The court has now asked the government to prepare a compilation of policemen that would be posted in hospitals and submit it to the court on July 7. The direction was given during the hearing of a PIL filed by one Afak Madivya, who had highlighted the fact that doctors had gone on strike at the state-run JJ hospital after raising allegations of mental harassment against the dean of the hospital. It was only after being reprimanded by the high court that they had withdrawn the seven-day strike.
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