Her colleagues say she was a conscientious doctor who protected her patients in the face of pressure from powerful entities in the sugarcane belt of Maharashtra. But, no one stood up for her. Was it suicide that killed the Satara doctor, or slow suffocation in a system built to exploit? travelled to the district to dig deep
Imaging/Aparna Chaudhari
Phaltan falls in the Satara district, four hours away from my hometown, Kolhapur. From the endearing colloquialism of ending sentences with ‘ki’ — “vhoye ki (but of course)” — to the small, brick-coloured bungalows, to the swathes of partially cut sugarcane fields, replete with cows grazing in angaans, everything takes me back to the carefree summer vacations of my childhood.
On Tuesday, as we enter the city limits at lunch hour, Phaltan’s air is heavy with drowsiness. Afraid to be lulled into a false sense of safety, I deliberately put my guard up and think about Samrudhi (name changed to protect her identity), a 28-year-old doctor who gave up on life after the entire system failed her.
In the intervening night of October 23 and 24, Dr Samrudhi checked into a hotel room. She was found dead three hours later, with a note scribbled on her hand in Marathi. The doctor, remembered as “bright, hardworking, and upright” by her friends, had blamed police sub-inspector (PSI) Gopal Badane of sexual assault, and software engineer Prashant Bankar of prolonged mental harassment.
Originally from Beed, Samrudhi had been working as a medical officer at the Phaltan primary health centre (PHC) since 2023, conducting autopsies and medical fitness tests in police cases. After her death, letters surfaced revealing a run-in with the authorities; the Phaltan rural police accused her of being uncooperative, while Samruddhi alleged that the officers — including Badane and Bankar — were forcing her to issue false fitness certificates for accused in criminal cases. Both men have since been arrested.
The hospital where the doctor was working and asked to give fitness certificates. Pics/Pradeep Dhivar
We meet up with a local journalist at the Phaltan court, where Bankar is scheduled to be deposed. There’s a gaggle of journalists waiting outside the courthouse who scatter as soon as we hear that Bankar’s appearance has been postponed. The out-of-towners, namely us, are left with a well-meaning warning by a fellow scribe, “No one will speak madam. Vaatavaran tense aahe [tensions are high].”
Refusing to waste daylight, the photographer, Pradeep Dhivar, and I make our way to the PHC a few kilometres away. Right off the bat, the backs of our necks prickle with a distinct awareness of being watched. We spot cops in plainclothes keeping watch on the facility, and keep our distance.
No one emerges from the hospital, there’s not a soul willing to be seen speaking to us. Through some old sources, we finally get through to Samrudhi’s colleague on the phone. They pick up after three tries. “Sorry, madam,” she says after a pause, “I can’t talk.”
Madhudeep Hotel where the doctor tragically took her own life
Still standing outside the hospital, we call Dr Manoj Khomane, the working president of the Maharashtra Association of Gazetted Medical Officers (MAGMO), as well as the taluka health officer of Baramati. “They [doctors] will not speak to the media,” he says when we ask him to direct us to a more forthcoming doctor. “You can imagine the stress the staff is facing inside the hospital. They are hearing so many things about their colleague, and they don’t know what to believe. Internally, too, they have been told to keep quiet and not speak to the media.”
MAGMO was one of the first doctors’ unions to ask for the investigation to be transferred outside Phaltan, demanding a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for the case. On November 1, the Maharashtra government, on the instructions of deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, formed the SIT, which will be led by a woman IPS officer.
Over the course of my career, there have been few other moments where I can recall experiencing this visceral desire to get the hell out of dodge. Even accompanied by two men, and the knowledge that a car waits for us whenever we wish to leave, I feel helpless and remember what it’s like to be a woman in a small town. We can’t help but think of Samrudhi all alone, her voice drowned out by more powerful men, as the walls closed in around her.
Woman wrote a note on her palm before she died by suicide. Pic/X@theskindoctor13
As far back as 2023, Samrudhi had allegedly been flagging concerns over demands to doctor medical fitness tests in police cases. Far from helping her, she alleged the police harassed her and PSI Badane raped her. Even her home was not a safe space; she was renting the apartment from the family of the other accused, Bankar.
Throughout our conversations with journalists and locals, there’s tight-lipped judgment when we ask about the deceased doctor’s equation with Badane. The insinuation that they were intimate seems to have existed in the small town even before the doctor took her life. There’s less talk about whether it was consensual or coerced, and more condemnation: “Why sleep with a cop in the first place?”
“I don’t know why she did it, but sometimes these things happen,” says a more empathetic local pharmacist at a medical store near the hospital.
Protests outside Mantralaya asking for swift justice. Pic/Special Arrangement
It’s been widely reported by business media that Western Maharashtra — including Solapur, Pune, Ahmednagar, Satara, and Kolhapur districts — produces more than half the state’s sugarcane output. These districts’ share of the state’s sugar turnover of R1 lakh crore would be around R50,000 crore annually.
What has sugarcane got to do with the doctor? “It’s all connected to sugarcane money,” a local journalist tells us. Media reports have stated that Bankar, too, is part of this economy, working as a labour contractor during harvest months.
“It is sugarcane harvest time, and a lot of mill owning families bring in labour from other districts, including Beed. The labour contractor and mill owner come to an agreement over the payment,” they add. “But the labourers might not agree to the amount and refuse to turn up at work. The contractor then forcibly picks up the labourers. Some of them manage to escape and either complain to the police, or show up at the hospital saying they are injured.”
In the past two years, a few such labourers are said to have found their way to Dr Samrudhi, who allegedly refused to declare them medically fit, which meant the police could not take them out of the hospital. This seems to have been the flashpoint in the saga.
One of her colleagues finally agrees to speak to us, but only over the phone. “We are all being watched,” they say while requesting anonymity, “It’s a small town, it’s not rocket science for the police to figure out that you spoke to me.”
“If the police bring any injured person in their custody to the government hospital within 24 hours of arrest, and if the doctor doesn’t give the fitness certificate, the cops have to deploy manpower to guard the person in the hospital, which translates into extra work for them,” says the doctor, requesting to call back in 10 minutes.
They do call back. “I had to get to a safe place, you never know who will tell our superiors or even the police. We are more afraid of the latter; they harass you and get you transferred if they feel you are against them,” they say.
When we ask about the deceased doctor, they say, “She was known to be diligent, honest and meticulous in her work. She was young; maybe if she had lived, she would have learnt survival skills that older doctors often talk about — compromise on the little things, learn to bargain, keep your head down, think about your family.”
It’s a loss felt keenly by the medical fraternity. “Shambhar Samrudhi bali padhtil, kahi badalnaar nahi [a hundred Samrudhis will be sacrificed, but nothing will change],” he says, his voice growing strained for the first time. “The police are required, by a Supreme Court judgment, to present an accused for medical examination within 24 hours of arrest. The same judgment also holds the doctor accountable if something were to happen to the patient after they are discharged on the basis of our certificate. So we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” he adds.
We reach out to Dr Vaibhav Rathod, MAGMO member and a senior doctor from a health centre 20 km away. “I came to the [Phaltan] hospital when I heard what had happened. I didn’t know her personally, but when you hear something like this has happened to a doctor who works for the government, you want to know what happened,” he says. “You think to yourself, if it were me, I would want my colleagues to come and ask questions too. Even if one person turns up for a doctor like her, it puts pressure on the authorities. More than anything, we understand what she went through. We stand in solidarity,” he adds.
As I get back into our vehicle, dusk is upon us. I can’t help but think back to when I was 28. I can’t help but wonder if I would have been able to stand against intimidating cops, crony sugarcane barons?
It’s never just about a fitness certificate.
What’s the case?
A 28-year-old doctor was found dead at a hotel in Phaltan on October 23. In a note written on her palm, the doctor accused police sub-inspector Gopal Badane of allegedly raping her and software engineer Prashant Bankar of mental harassment.
The numbers don’t lie
Adv Varsha Deshpande
As a Satara local, Adv Varsha Deshpande has been able to study at close range the lack of rights among workers hired for ‘utaari’ (labour money) by sugarcane mills in western Maharashtra. The author of the book Bitter Sugarcane, Deshpande says the Satara suicide is tied to the sugarcane lobby nexus.
“This case involves a particular karkhana owner who seems to have had multiple complaints lodged against him,” she says, “We have also learned that in the past year alone, there were over 400 autopsies in that very small city, out of which she [Samrudhi] had conducted over 80.”
She questions why the authorities have not made the connection between so many deaths requiring postmortems come harvest season: “How have the police not been able to make this connection? It is obvious to everyone,” she adds.
Deshpande reveals that the state’s sugar mills have a turnover that exceeds the state finance ministry’s revenue by 1.5 times. “This is big money, and the sugar barons earn this off the backs of the labourers. Around 10 lakh labourers are employed during harvest time; 50 per cent of them are women. The labourers have no rights, in fact, it is modern-day slavery,” says the author of Bitter Sugarcane, the English translation of Koytyacha Mudhit. “The book is about child rights violation in the sugarcane industry. Loosely translated, the Marathi title means to be born with a sickle in your hand,” she explains.
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