Harassed dental students plan stir
Hyderabad, July 10 (INN): Though the state government may argue that it can do very little about the protests and agitations by students of the Osmania University on the separate statehood issue since the solution lies with the Centre, it can avert a possible strike by students of the Osmania Dental College and Hospital if it takes some immediate steps.
The anger of the students and most of the staff of the Osmania Dental College and Hospital is almost on the point of spilling over. If it does, they are more likely to repeat a stir which had once rocked the College and shocked the state in 2005.
After all, who would keep on suffering in silence sustained harassment and mental torture, being split into 'camps' through manipulations and generally being schemed against?
Indications are that they would not only resort to a stir, but in fact some of them may sit on a indefinite hunger strike to press home the point that they are a tortured lot.
The students and most of the staff of the state's most coveted dental college and the only one offering Post Graduate in Dental Surgery course, allege that their tormentor is none other than the Head of the Oral Medicine and Radiology Department Dr M Manjula and her confidante and Principal the college Dr Kamala Devi.
The students, too afraid to reveal their identities, have a litany of complaints against Dr Manjula. The allegations levelled against Dr Manjula are too serious to brush aside. They range from adopting discriminatory attitude towards and against some students, to insulting their caste and community.
The allegations also range from downright unethical practices an educationalist can utilise against his or her students like deliberately failing them in their examinations to threats of doing so.
The allegations are not new. The students of the college had resorted to a strike against Dr Manjula in 2005, citing the same allegations.
Besides the students and staff of the College, even the State Commission for SCs and STs had complained to the government against Dr Manjula against her anti-community attitude.
A Court referred complaint was also registered against Dr Manjula with the Afzalgunj Police station based on the complaint of a harassed student in February 2005.
The strike was given wide coverage by the media including leading newspapers like the Deccan Chronicle and Indian Express, besides television channels.
This forced the authorities to transfer Dr Manjula to Gandhi Hospital. However, the students' joy was short lived, as the educationalist managed to pull the proper strings and get transferred back.
The students strike' at that time had one positive effect for them, and this was that college Principal Dr Kamala Devi was also transferred.
This left Dr Manjula without the services of her most trusted lieutenant and confidante.
'They are very likeminded. They take sadistic pleasure in tormenting the students and the patients who visit the Dental College cum Hospital,' says a student with fervent pleas of his name to be kept confidential.
When asked why was he so afraid of the HOD, the student says that his entire future can be destroyed by Dr Manjula if she finds out that he is the one who had the courage to speak against her.
Some students allege that she managed to get herself transferred from the Gandhi Hospital back to the Osmania Dental College by forging signatures of students, in collusion with the then in-charge principal Osmania Dental College and Hospital, Kamala Devi.
This forced the students to resort to a strike against Dr Kamala for 40 days. The government was forced to transfer Dr Kamala in 2007, but by this time Dr Manjula had managed to come back to her post in the Osmania Dental College.
To the shock of the students, Dr Kamala was brought back to the OGH in January 2011. 'Since then, she has become even more vindictive and sadistic,' a staff member says, again on the condition of anonymity.
'She harassed a minority Post Graduate student to the extent that he went into a depression. She is very communal minded and is proud of her caste,' the students say. 'She also splits the students by infusing caste feelings among them,' some more students complained.
Not only students, even patients belonging to minorities or lower castes suffer at the hands of Dr Manjula, some staff members pointed out. 'She refers these patients to go in for expensive tests or radiographs outside the hospital just to make them incur the expenses,' they said.
News Posted: 11 July, 2011
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