Anonymous sex scandal letter:Div Com’s Probe Outrages Unani Hospital Staff

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Srinagar: The doctors at the Unani hospital, Shalteng are outraged over the enquiry initiated by the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir Asghar Samoon following an anonymous and unsubstantiated complaint about a sex racket at the prestigious institution. They have accused Samoon of acting in haste to institute a probe against the entire institution and all its employees without first checking the whereabouts of the complainant, his motivations and whether he or she had any evidence.
 The doctors and the ministerial staff at the hospital, many of them women, said they were devastated by the inexplicable government enquiry  with all of them having to face awkward questions, not the least by the SWC chief, who came rushing to the hospital after the story against the hospital was published in a local daily.
 “The women doctors who have been posted to the Unani hospital either from peripheries or from other dispensaries of the Srinagar can’t be absolutely presumed to have granted sexual favours for the transfer.  This is insane on the part of the senior state functionaries,” said a lady doctor on the condition of anonymity. “Would Div Com do it if his own daughter or wife was serving here?”
Another doctor said they were deeply disturbed and embarrassed by the sweeping allegation against the institution which threatens to taint the reputation of all of them and for no fault of theirs.  
“How come the government entertains an anonymous complaint against an institution but does nothing to identify the complainant, see his motivations and ask him to at least show some minimum proof for the allegations he is making,” said a male doctor who says he now faces questions at home. “Suppose Samoon Sahib had  got an anonymous complaint about a sex racket in his own office, would he order  an enquiry  with a subject-line ‘sex racket  in Div Com’s office’?”
A lady doctor said that the day after story of the sex enquiry was carried by a local daily, the State Women’s Commission chief Nayeema Mehjoor dropped in unannounced and seemed to suspect all the female and male employees of being involved in the racket. 
“She talked to all the women employees, threw probing glances, read our faces, checked our gestures and then coaxed us to speak out how we  were exploited.  And yes, she also asked why we were in our present place of posting in the first place and that may be we had doled out sexual favours to the seniors to be here,” said a woman doctor. “We were left dumbfounded. We didn’t know how to react. It was too embarrassing to be put into a situation where government presumes a sex racket and then asks us to account for it”.
The doctor termed the situation “Kafkaesque”.
 “This is what Samoon Sahib has done to around 100 employees of the Valley’s biggest Unani hospital,” she said. “Onus is not on the complainant to prove his allegation but on the wildly and sweepingly accused employees to prove their innocence. Can you beat this? We are male and female doctors from respectable families”
On May 6, Samoon’s office received an anonymous letter from a fictitious AYUSH Doctors Association. The letter raises the issue of the arrest of the Medical Superintendent of the Unani Hospital Dr Javed Ahmad Mir for raping a woman relative of his at her house in Ajas Bandipora. Mir is since in jail. But the complainant in his letter mischievously links Mir’s individual crime at his relative’s house to the Unani hospital.
“This incident (Mir’s arrest) exposes the general state of affairs in Department of Indian System of Medicine and it is worth mentioning here that a good number (of) female doctors posted in peripheral institutes are working without any order  at the behest of Director General of ISM  in Unani Hospital Shalteng, Srinagar,” the part of the anonymous  complaint letter about the hospital reads.
In probably the fastest action to date by any senior government functionary on an anonymous complaint, Samoon sends the letter over to the Deputy Commissioner Dr Farooq Ahmad Lone the same day.  Lone doing the bidding of his boss institutes an enquiry there and then under ADC  Nazir Ahmad Baba.
Subject line of the enquiry order is: “Sex racket in Unani Hospital’.
It is a straight lift from the subject line of the anonymous complaint letter. 
 “As if for the Div Com, the subject-line of an anonymous letter of an unknown person was more authoritative and respectable than the reputations of around 100 employees, with more than twenty of them being the women comprising doctors and the ministerial staff,” said a woman doctor of the hospital.
When contacted the enquiry officer N A Baba said his role was just to probe and give report to the government.  “We have received a complaint. I have been assigned the job by the government and I have to do it,” he said.
When asked whether he has identified the complainant and called him to give some proof, Baba said, he didn’t know who he was. “But I have issued an order asking him to be present. But he hasn’t come so far,” he said. “And if he doesn’t turn up, we will take action against him”.
When contacted Deputy Commissioner Srinagar  Farooq Ahmad Lone said that the government can order enquiry  on anonymous complaints. “Whether we get an anonymous letter or a regular letter against anybody, our job is to act upon it,” Lone said. 
Calls to Div Com Samoon went, however abegging

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