Nurse accuses doctor of sexual harassment

Rajshahi Medical College and Hospital (RMCH) unit of Bangladesh Nurses Association yesterday formed a human chain inside the college campus, demanding exemplary punishment of a doctor who has been accused of sexually harassing a nurse.

RMCH, on the other hand, has asked the senior staff nurse to "not take the incident outside campus". The nurses claim this is a bid to save the accused doctor from legal action.

The accused, Dr Mamunur Rashid is an authorised physician who studied at a private medical college. He has been undergoing training on anaesthesia at the hospital, RMCH Director Brig Gen Shamim Yazdani said.

The RMCH Director claimed they were not belittling the incident. He said, they withdrew the doctor from his duties and formed a five-member committee headed by Rajshahi Medical College Vice-Principal Habibullah Sarker to investigate into the matter.

"We are seriously dealing with the matter. The incident that occurred was a very small one which is not fit to be taken to the police or court," he said.

"We did not tell her not to take any legal action, but we did tell her to lay low on the issue and see what we can do about the incident," he said.

He said the hospital's staff are like a family and they can settle incidents like sexual harassment within the hospital.

This correspondent obtained a copy of the complaint that the nurse sent to the Director General of Nursing and Midwifery yesterday.

The complaint says, Dr Mamun inappropriately touched her with his elbow in the morning of January 18 while she was working with him at the hospital's ICU.

"I didn't report the incident to anyone as I was newly posted at the ICU," the complaint reads.

Next morning when she went to her duty and was handing him a piece of medical equipment, the doctor caught her hand, the complaint says.

Managing release from the doctor, she went to the reception room of the ICU and sat.

The doctor went to her, touched her from the back and then sexually harassed her, reads the complaint.

She informed the matter to her senior nurses and reported it to the president and secretary of the RMCH nurses' association.

Contacted, the association president Shahadatun Noor denied making any comment. She said, "We serve here and we have some rules. You have to understand our situation by observing our public activities," she said.

The nurses are strongly protesting this incident on their personal social media profiles.

Contacted, the public prosecutor of Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal in Rajshahi, Ismat Ara Begum, said that other than monetary fines, the highest punishment for incidents of sexual harassment is ten years of imprisonment and the least is three years.

She said the hospital authority can take punitive actions against the responsible person, but the sexual harassment victim has the right to seek justice under the law.