A bold initiative by Kerala’s own Nirbhaya made the CPI(M) led Government eat humble pie and reinstate a senior nursing officer who stood steadfast with the victim of a gruesome rape.

P B Anitha, senior nursing officer, Kozhikode Medical College Hospital (MCH), who has been suspended from service at the intervention of Veena George, the State’s controversial health minister, was reinstated by a special order following widespread demonstration and rallies against the minister’s high-handed attitude.

Anitha was put under suspension for extending all support to the Nirbhaya, who was brutally raped by a  CPI(M) trade union leader while she was undergoing treatment at the Intensive Care Unit of the MCH. 

According to doctors attending to her, Nirbhaya was in a state of semi-conscious stage in the ICU following a surgery when Saseendran, leader of the CPI(M) led trade union sexually assaulted her.

Anitha extended all help to the victim as other staff members of the hospital were reluctant to attend to her lest the perpetrator get annoyed.

Despite Anitha taking care of the victim, she was shunted out from Kozhikode to far away Idukki in order to save the CPI(M) comrade.

Though Anitha got a favourable order from Kerala High Court which ordered that she be posted at MCH Kozhikode itself, the minister was adamant that the senior nursing officer should go and there was no question of any compromise.

Anitha was staging a sit-in in front of the hospital for the last five days demanding justice and the execution of the High Court order.

On Friday evening, the Nirbhaya joined the sit-in to express her solidarity with Anitha. “She  was very kind to me and was the only one who offered her shoulders to me. I’ll sit with her till she is reinstated here itself,” the Nirbhaya, who staged the sit-in with her face covered with black mask told media persons.

Though Veena George, a lateral entry leader to the CPI(M), stood her ground that there was no question of being kind to Anitha, better sense prevailed by Saturday noon and she ordered the directorate of medical education to reinstate Anitha in MCH Kozhikode.It is reported that the move is a fall out of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s intervention for fear of losing public face during the Lok Sabha polls. Government Hospitals in Kerala have become infamous because of frequent incidents of rape of female patients by male staff and physical assault on duty doctors.