Just two hours before his exam, the Gujarat High Court ordered Ahmedabad's BJ Medical College to give their student, Dr Mari Raj his hall ticket. This, just after the third-year general surgery student had attempted suicide in January alleging caste discrimination by the hospital administration. Raj was in a harried state at 2 pm and said, "I need to prepare for the exam as I have only 45 minutes."
According to Raj, who hails from Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, the college authorities were holding back his hall ticket because he refused to give into their demands to drop the case he had filed against them for discriminating against him on the basis of caste, language and region. On May 1, the resident doctor had uploaded a video on Facebook appealing for help from the Tamil Nadu government and others to help him secure his hall ticket. "Instead of studying for my exam, I'm forced to record this video because the college authorities are holding back my hall ticket. My exam is at 3 pm tomorrow and I still have not got my hall ticket," he said in the video. He goes on to mention the names of the doctors he has filed a case against for discriminating against him and has said that ever since he made his allegations public, the torture had allegedly only gotten worse.
This is video he uploaded on May 1-
The administration had claimed that he had not completed the formalities on time and had come up with various excuses to not issue his hall ticket. However, they had not issued a rejection letter to him either, "If there was any issue they should have informed me a month in advance and asked for an explanation. They are unnecessarily delaying the procedures and now one day before my exam I'm not even sure if I'll be allowed to write the exam," he had said.
After running from pillar to post, he approached the Gujarat High Court which finally directed the authorities to issue Raj's hall ticket. Speaking to Edex, he also said that he will "think about any further steps he might take only after he completes the paper."
Ever since he joined the College three years ago, Raj claimed that he had been continuously discriminated against. From not being allowed into surgery, to being asked to serve tea to the doctors, not being allowed to sleep in the ward even after 40 hours of work, to being verbally abused day in and day out, the doctor had said that he has faced all sorts of harassment at the hands of his superiors and his peers.
