Amit Shah responds to SOS from doctors, tells police chief to crack the whip

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has asked people to change their mindset after reports that doctors and airline crew were being harassed for working closely with coronavirus patients

Resident doctors of All India Institute of Medical Sciences in national capital Delhi on Tuesday approached Home Minister Amit Shah for his intervention after reports that some landlords were forcing out doctors and medical personnel staying in their house over fears that they might have contracted SARS-CoV-2 at work.

In a letter to Amit Shah, the doctors’ body said there had been several instances of healthcare professionals being evicted by house owners and asked the home minister to order the police to help them out.

“Many doctors are now stranded on the roads with all their luggage, nowhere to go, across the country,” president of the AIIMS association of resident doctors Dr Adarsh Pratap Singh said.

Amit Shah later phoned Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava to ask him to take action on complaints received from healthcare professionals. Dr Srinivas Rajkumar T, general secretary of the AIIMS association, later said the home minister had called him the association also and assured that “any such issue of ostracisation will be taken seriously and action will be taken immediately”.

Doctors aren’t the first set of professionals to complain of harassment at the hands of landlords and neighbours. Air India and IndiGo had reported receiving similar complaints from airline crew after India bought home hundreds of citizens stranded abroad.

Union aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri had backed them earlier in the day, speaking with “distress” at news that some aviation professionals who had been at the forefront of efforts to rescue fellow citizens and helped contain the spread of Covid-19 were being harassed by their neighbours and resident welfare associations.

By Tuesday evening, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also weighed in with a request directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“On the request of our Prime Minister we clapped for our doctors, nurses and others who are giving essential services. But now I am getting information that a landlord has forcefully evicted a nurse tenant as she treats coronavirus patients,” Kejriwal said.

Some people, Kejriwa continued, are not allowing the pilots and air hostesses to enter their colonies. “This is not right. These people are risking their lives for us and we are behaving in this way. We should change this mindset,” Arvind Kejriwal said.