Justifying Assault Unjustified

The recent case of assault on a junior female doctor by a female attendant after her father died during treatment of brain haemorrhage at the emergency ward of GMC&H Jammu has led to a debate that whether the behaviour of the aforesaid attendant under grief and stress was acceptable or not? It is pertinent to mention that the daughter of the deceased patient and other relatives have alleged negligence by the junior doctors. This incident led to strike by the junior doctors crippling the healthcare services in GMC&H Jammu forcing the Principal of the aforesaid Medical College to depute senior faculty for running the emergency services and other allied facilities. Finally, after the arrest of the accused girl, the agitating junior doctors, who were on indefinite strike called off their strike and resumed their duties. Following the arrest of the accused girl in the case, a peculiar thing surfaced in the social media with a good number of netizens raising their voices in support of the girl who was arrested by the police and booked for assaulting the female doctor. It is strange that quite a large number of people in J&K and in some cases from outside the UT have stood up in support of the one who had assaulted the doctor highlighting that the society tends to support something which is forbidden by the law as violence of any kind is illegal. The big question is that if the attacker would have been a man or a boy, would these people have supported him with the same pitch and tempo? The need of the hour is that the citizens should know about the law of the land and they should not indulge in anything which is illegal and people should also not support such acts since these could set wrong precedents as was seen in less than a week’s time when another case of assault on doctors has surfaced from SMHS hospital in Srinagar. While grief and loss are human emotions that demand empathy but this doesn’t justify violence in any case. It is the right time that the government, people and the police should join hands to make hospitals places of healing and not a rink for playing blame games and indulging into fights. All said and done, the normalization of violence under emotional distress is totally unjustifiable and therefore people should show restraint in such situations and try to toe a line which is genuine and lawful also.