Following the horrific sexual assault of a 15-year-old minor by a senior consultant doctor inside an Out-Patient Department (OPD) room at Kurukshetra’s Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) Civil Hospital on May 29, 2026, a massive institutional crisis has gripped Haryana. The incident escalated into a statewide conflict after the Chairperson of the Haryana State Commission for Women (HSCW), Renu Bhatia, visited the facility and aggressively scolded the nursing staff, asking them, “Chhodu aapki beti ko kisi mard ke saath akele?” (Should I leave your daughter alone with a man?).
While the accused doctor was arrested and terminated, Bhatia’s accusations of negligence and collusion sparked immediate outrage from the medical community, culminating in thousands of government nurses launching coordinated, statewide pen-down strikes. In the latest development, under immense pressure from protesting healthcare unions, Bhatia submitted her resignation to Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini but defiantly refused to tender an apology to the nursing fraternity.
A Doctor’s Betrayal
On May 29, 2026, a local man and his 15-year-old daughter arrived at the LNJP Civil Hospital for medical treatment. The attending physician, around 62 years old retired Senior Medical Officer (SMO) Shailendra Kumar Shally who was re-employed as a consultant allegedly split the family by admitting them into separate wards. Inside his closed OPD room, Dr. Shally sexually assaulted the minor.
The victim began bleeding extensively, prompting the doctor to flee the premises. The traumatized minor disclosed the details to her father two days later, leading to a police complaint on May 31. The Kurukshetra Police swiftly registered a case against Dr. Shally under Sections 6 and 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, alongside the SC/ST Act and subsequently jailed him. While the state government terminated the accused doctor’s services, administrative reports surfaced indicating that the consultant had faced similar misconduct allegations in his past career.
The Confrontation
The trauma of the assault took a deeply controversial turn on June 7, when Renu Bhatia arrived at LNJP Hospital to conduct an inspection and take suo motu cognisance of the case. Instead of directing her scrutiny toward the administrative security or background screening protocols that allowed a previously accused retired doctor to be re-employed, Bhatia turned her anger onto the female medical staff and on-duty nursing officers. Confronting them aggressively in an interaction that quickly went viral on social media and YouTube, Bhatia lambasted the women for negligence.
During her reprimand, Bhatia targeted the female staff with an aggressive rhetorical question, asking if they expected her to leave a daughter alone in a room with a man. She publically humiliated the staff, declaring that the doctor had been inside the room with the minor for 45 minutes without a single nurse intervening. Before leaving, she ordered the immediate suspension of three on-duty nursing officers and demanded the removal of the hospital’s Principal Medical Officer (PMO), Dr. Sarah Agrawal.
Medical Staff Fight Back
The video of the interaction sparked instant fury across the healthcare community, with the nursing staff at LNJP Hospital completely rejecting Bhatia’s framework. They pointed out that her allegations demonstrated a fundamental ignorance of how government hospital OPDs operate. Senior Nursing Officer Gurmeet Kaur, the in-charge of the Kurukshetra OPD, explained that OPD setups dictate that a nursing officer is assigned to assist a doctor during a female patient’s physical examination only if explicitly requested by the physician. In this instance, Dr. Shally deliberately kept the door shut and never called for nursing support.
Furthermore, the striking nurses highlighted a severe institutional deficit, arguing that they are heavily overworked, often managing upwards of 70 to 80 patients simultaneously across multiple corridors. They stated that demanding they act as an unnotified surveillance unit for individual consultation rooms is a structural impossibility. Representatives of the nursing union asserted that Bhatia unfairly blamed them for negligence and hinted at collusion without a shred of evidence or proper inquiry, using deeply inappropriate, defamatory language that humiliated their entire fraternity.
The Pen-Down Strikes
What began as local outrage quickly transformed into a unified statewide movement. Following a local walkout, the Nursing Officers’ Welfare Association, Haryana, called a symbolic strike across major districts, including Sonipat, Karnal, Gurugram, Faridabad, Sirsa, Nuh and Palwal. Healthcare workers walked out of routine OPD duties and gathered in front of civil hospitals to raise slogans against the state women’s panel chief.
The wave of solidarity effectively disrupted routine healthcare services across major state districts. To avoid a total collapse of patient care, the protesting bodies maintained a skeleton staff, ensuring that emergency rooms, Intensive Care Units (ICUs), and maternity wards remained functional. However, regular checkups and diagnostic divisions ground to a halt as multiple health associations, including the Haryana Civil Medical Services Association, Pharmacy Officers’ Association, and Laboratory Technicians’ Association, joined the sit-in protests.
A Resignation And Defiance
The All India Government Nurses Federation (AIGNF) wrote an urgent dispatch to Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, demanding the immediate termination of the Women’s Commission chief and the registration of an FIR against her for public defamation and workplace harassment. Faced with an expanding rebellion from the backbone of the state’s healthcare machinery, Renu Bhatia submitted her resignation letter to the Chief Minister on Tuesday afternoon, marking an end to her four-year tenure.
Despite stepping down, Bhatia remained utterly defiant. Speaking to the media, she claimed her resignation was strictly due to family reasons regarding an upcoming three-month trip abroad, insisting it should not be linked to the protests. She categorically refused to apologize to the nurses, asserting that she said nothing wrong and that her remarks were entirely justified given the gravity of the child’s assault. She went on to accuse the striking nurses of misusing their positions and allowing the protest to be hijacked by political opposition, while the nursing association threatened a full-scale strike involving emergency services if a formal apology was not issued.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
This entire chain of events exposes a deeply unsettling institutional pathology where lower-tier healthcare workers predominantly women are routinely scapegoated to shield systemic administrative failures. The sexual assault of a minor inside a government hospital is a catastrophic failure of patient safety that demands rigorous structural accountability, strict background verification for re-employed staff, and the enforcement of mandatory chaperone policies.
However, addressing a safety lapse by publicly humiliating overworked nursing officers, weaponizing defamatory rhetoric and labeling them as accomplices without an investigation is completely unacceptable. A constitutional body meant to safeguard women must lead with empathy, justice, and dignity, rather than resorting to knee-jerk bullying that fractures the morale of our essential healthcare professionals. True systemic reform cannot be built on the foundations of administrative tyranny and public humiliation.What are your thoughts on this institutional confrontation? How can we ensure the safety of vulnerable patients in public hospitals without compromising the professional dignity of our healthcare workers? We welcome your thoughts in the comments below, and please share this story to encourage a constructive dialogue on structural accountability.
Retd doctor ‘sexually assaults’ 15-yr-old at Haryana govt hospital, flees. FIR filed under POCSO Act
— ThePrintIndia (@ThePrintIndia) June 1, 2026
Sushil Manav @sushilmanav reports for ThePrinthttps://t.co/eGjXGrn2y6
