Known for misbehaving with doctors since he took over as the Minister for Health and Medical Education for the first time in 2002, the Jammu and Kashmir Health Minister Chaudhary Lal Singh once again caught on camera touching inappropriately a woman doctor at a government hospital in Lakhanpur on Tuesday.
According to reports a photo of the minister touching the collar of a female doctor while others watching went viral on Facebook and Twitter. The opposition demanded a stringent action against the minister for his inappropriate act.
Singh has courted controversy just two weeks after taking his oath in February as JK Health Minister this year, after a woman doctor filed a complaint against him, accusing him of mental harassment amounting to outraging modesty.
The complainant alleged that she was standing with other hospital staff when the minister walked towards her and asked her why wasn’t she wearing her lab coat.
To this, she replied that as it was a social function she thought it was not required. The minister, according to the complainant, shouted at her and said, it is an official function.
The doctor said she informed the minister that at times psychiatrists don’t wear their coats even in hospital wards, so as to make their patients feel comfortable around them. But, she alleged, the minister shouted at her and said, “Who has invited you here?”
“He snapped his fingers at me and said ‘Tumhara Kaam Ho gaya, chalo niklo bahar’,” the doctor said in her complaint. She said the incident had shattered her emotionally and requested the SHO to register an FIR against the minister.