Reported by Gujarat Samachar
The tragic death of Dr Harsh Pandya, a 29-year-old postgraduate resident doctor at Government Medical College in Surat, has blown the lid off a toxic culture of persistent ragging, harassment, and institutional silence across Gujarat’s medical institutions. Found dead in his hostel room at the New Civil Hospital campus on Sunday morning, the first-year microbiology student had confided in his father about intense mental strain and intimidation by senior residents, prompting Gujarat Health Minister Praful Pansheriya to order an urgent 24-hour probe that led to the immediate suspension of four senior doctors.
The death of Dr Pandya, whose father Subhash Pandya is a practicing doctor in Aravalli district, is far from an isolated incident. Instead, it marks the latest in a series of alarming campus hazing cases that continue to plague Gujarat despite repeated warnings from the National Medical Commission (NMC).
Patan was actually included in the story—in fact, it was featured right in the subheading ("A Deadly Pattern: From Patan to Ahmedabad and Bhavnagar") and detailed in the paragraph immediately following it as the primary tragic benchmark (the November 2024 GMERS Dharpur-Patan case involving 18-year-old Anil Methaniya).