Mistreating Inmates: Probe panel submits report, finds nothing ‘unusual’
A four member inquiry committee at Psychiatric Diseases Hospital, Rainawari that was tasked to submit its report over the allegations leveled by a woman featuring in a video, said that nothing ‘unusual’ was found during the inquiry.
The report was submitted to Principal Medical College and Medical Superintendent.
The committee headed by the Deputy Medical Superintendent of the hospital was directed to submit its report within three days on July 6.
Earlier, a woman in the video had leveled serious allegations of inmates being subjected to violence by beating them and had appealed people in authority to come to their rescue.
“For God’s sake, look into these atrocities committed on these patients. Their families think they (patients) get good treatment there but they are being mistreated by lower rung employees,” the woman says in the video.
Medical Superintended of the hospital, Dr Maqbool Ahmad Dar had ordered the probe into the matter.
According to the sources, the report has not recommended or suggested anything serious, however, it has said that the hospital has got a legal cell within the hospital premises that has been monitoring the well being of the patients.
Sources said that the committee members talked to the patients and their attendants regarding the issue, and nothing of this sort came to the fore.
Importantly, a Free Legal Aid Clinic has been set up in the hospital by the District Legal Services Authority to address complaints and other issues of the patients.
The report has further asked that the lady who has appeared in the video, to appear in person in front of the committee with the complaints, if any.
If the complaints are genuine then the woman should have brought the issue to the notice of the concerned authorities, rather than making a video and spreading wrong information in the society.
A senior doctor at the hospital said that the woman must have seen something happening within the hospital and must have wrongly perceived the scene.
“At times we have to control patients who are violent, according to the set protocol and a commoner may perceive that wrongly,” he said adding that violent culture in the hospital is a history now, things have changed.
The doctor said that “this hospital used to be named as Mental Asylum, even today it is being referred as Pagal Khan, but things change, and we have worked hard in bringing this hospital in line to what is the demand of modern times.”
Notably, at least 66 patients including 11 females, are currently undergoing treatment in the hospital, with a number of patients are also being taken care of who has have been abandoned by their families.
Officials said that some of them are good-to-return to their homes, but they are still lying in the hospital due to the lack of interest from the side of their respective families, however, the hospital administration is taking care of such patients as well.

Kashmir Correspondent cover all daily updates for the newspaper