AIDS patient suffers at hands of doctors

SURAT, MARCH 20: In a private nursing home at Sumal Diary Road, 17-year-old Beena (not her real name) silently awaits her fate. She is brave in the face of the tragedy that has befallen her she has tested HIV positive. But her attitude to life is almost philosophical: everyone has to die one day, she says.

For someone who accepted destiny’s cruel stroke with such courage, Beena had to go through much trauma only because of the behaviour of the doctors at the Civil Hospital here. Apparently, these doctors were anything but `civil’ to her.

She says, “They asked me how many times I had sex. How many people I had slept with. When I told them that I never done such things, a lady doctor coerced me into admitting things I had not done. She said she could use other ways and means to `extract the truth’.