Jodhpur- In five days, what began as the death of a first-year resident doctor inside the premises of AIIMS Jodhpur turned into an institutional confrontation over resident safety, working conditions, accountability and the authority of the institute's administration.
On September 22, Dr Rajnaresh Yadav, a postgraduate resident in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care, was found unconscious inside a bathroom in the doctors' resting area while he was on duty. He was taken to the emergency department, where he was declared dead. Police began investigating the circumstances and suspected suicide.
By September 23, resident doctors had launched an indefinite protest. By September 24, elective operations and routine OPD services had been suspended by the protesting residents, while emergency services continued. By September 25, the agitation had intensified and the demand for the resignation of AIIMS Jodhpur Executive Director Dr Govardhan Dutt Puri had become a central demand. On the night of September 25-26, resident doctors demonstrated outside the Director's residence.
On September 27, the administration changed: Puri was removed from the directorship and called to Delhi, while AIIMS Jammu Executive Director Prof. Dr Sanjeev Sinha was given charge of AIIMS Jodhpur, according to reports published on Sunday. The residents subsequently ended their agitation.
The sequence is significant because the change at the top of one of India's premier medical institutions came within five days of the resident doctor's death and amid an escalating institutional protest.
The chain of events began on Tuesday, September 22.
Dr Rajnaresh Yadav, a postgraduate resident in Anaesthesiology and Critical Care, was on duty in the operation theatre. According to police accounts reported by multiple news organisations, he left the OT during a break and went towards a bathroom in the doctors' resting area.
When he did not return for a considerable period, colleagues began looking for him. They reportedly heard his mobile phone ringing from inside the locked bathroom. The door was opened and Yadav was found unconscious.
He was taken to the emergency department, where he was declared dead.
Police found syringes near him and suspected that he may have injected himself with a lethal drug. Police also said that no suicide note had been recovered at that stage. His mobile phone was seized and forensic examination was initiated. The post-mortem and investigation were to establish the circumstances and cause of death.
That distinction matters.
The available reporting establishes that police suspected suicide. It does not establish, at this stage, why Yadav died, whether he had been subjected to any particular form of institutional pressure, or whether any person or institutional decision caused his death.
Those questions became the centre of the protest that followed.
The following day, the atmosphere inside AIIMS Jodhpur changed dramatically.
Yadav's family arrived at the institute. Reports said there was a confrontation between the family and AIIMS Director/Executive Director Dr Govardhan Dutt Puri. The situation around the institute remained tense and the post-mortem process was delayed amid the confrontation. Resident doctors then submitted a memorandum to the administration.
Resident doctors simultaneously began an indefinite strike.
Their demands went beyond the immediate circumstances of Yadav's death. They linked the tragedy to broader concerns involving duty hours, workload, staffing, resident welfare, leave, safety mechanisms and institutional representation.
Among the principal demands were accountability of the administration, a public apology or acknowledgement from AIIMS, financial assistance of Rs 5 crore for Yadav's family, payment of pending dues and other legitimate benefits to the family, and the resignation of the Executive Director.
The protest was not limited to a demand for a change of one office-holder.
The residents were demanding structural changes in the way the institute dealt with its doctors and students.
On September 23, AIIMS Jodhpur issued a communication stating that the death was already under police investigation.
The institute also constituted an in-house inquiry committee headed by the Dean Academic to examine the circumstances surrounding what it described as the "unfortunate incident". A separate committee was constituted to consider grievances raised by residents regarding working conditions and other concerns.
The administration appealed to the resident doctors to call off their strike, pointing to the possible impact on patient care.
But the residents did not accept an inquiry alone as sufficient.
For them, the issue had moved from an individual death to the question of institutional accountability.
That distinction drove the next four days.
By September 24, the Resident Doctors' Association had put its demands in writing.
According to the demands reported from the RDA's communication, residents sought regulation of duty hours, with the demand that scheduled duties should not exceed 12 hours and that adequate mandatory rest and post-duty recovery should be provided.
They also demanded additional resident doctors and auxiliary staff where required, regulation of OPD timings and workload, changes in elective OT timings and consideration of Saturday as an academic day.
The RDA additionally sought periodic review of resident and student safety, working conditions and mental-health conditions, along with appropriate case selection for elective and emergency OTs to prevent excessive workload.
The demands extended to leave.
Residents sought a transparent and uniform leave system through a simple online procedure and argued that emergency or sickness-related leave should not be denied.
They also demanded dedicated parking for residents near the Emergency, OPD and IPD areas.
The residents sought changes in student-welfare structures, including the reconstitution of the Office of the Dean Students' Welfare as an Office of Student Welfare, with meaningful student participation in its functioning.
They also sought institutional recognition of an MBBS hostel representative for undergraduate hostels so that students could formally raise issues concerning hostel facilities and welfare.
This was therefore no longer simply a protest over a death.
It had become a demand for a formal mechanism through which residents and students could question the administration.
The residents suspended elective OT procedures and routine OPD services from September 24, while emergency services continued. The administration, meanwhile, maintained that patient care should not be affected and appealed to the residents to return to work.
The demand for the resignation of Executive Director Dr Govardhan Dutt Puri became increasingly prominent.
Reports from September 24 and 25 consistently recorded that residents wanted the Director to step down.
This is an important part of the chronology because the demand preceded the government's eventual administrative change by several days.
The residents' demand was an accountability demand arising from their assessment of the institution's handling of the situation and their wider complaints about working conditions.
By Friday, September 25, the agitation had entered another phase.
The Indian Express reported that the protest continued for a third day, with residents staging a sit-in outside the OPD and refusing to resume work until their demands were addressed. The Director visited the protest site and attempted to speak with the protesting doctors.
The dispute was now affecting the functioning of the institute.
Regular OPD services were disrupted and concerns were being raised about the effect of the continuing agitation on patient care.
At the same time, emergency services were being maintained, reflecting the residents' position that essential medical services should continue even during the protest.
The issue also attracted attention beyond the AIIMS campus.
The Federation of Resident Doctors Association expressed solidarity with the protesting residents and called for an urgent resolution. It supported demands concerning an independent and transparent inquiry, duty-hour regulation, workload audits, safety, leave policy and resident welfare.
The protest had therefore moved from a local institutional dispute to an issue attracting attention from doctors' organisations outside Jodhpur.
The confrontation reached its most visible point on the night of September 25-26. Resident doctors demonstrated outside the Director's residence.
The Resident Doctors' Association described hundreds of doctors as remaining outside the residence during the night, demanding accountability and answers over Yadav's death. Medical Dialogues reported the RDA's posts describing demonstrations at around 1:30 am and again at 4 am.
The protest was no longer confined to the OPD or hospital entrance.
The Director's residence itself became the site of the residents' demand for accountability.
The same day, Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat visited the protesting doctors, heard their concerns and subsequently met AIIMS officials and representatives of the residents, according to a September 27 report by Rajasthan Patrika. The report said discussions continued but did not immediately produce a settlement.
The intervention was significant in another respect: the dispute had moved beyond the institute's internal administrative machinery and was now being discussed at the political and governmental level.
Sunday brought the decisive development. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued the order announcing Dr Govardhan Dutt Puri's removal from the post of Director of AIIMS Jodhpur and called to Delhi.
Prof. Dr Sanjeev Sinha, Executive Director and CEO of AIIMS Jammu, was given charge of AIIMS Jodhpur. AIIMS Jammu's official website identifies Sinha as its Executive Director and CEO.
The Health Department/Union government issued a letter concerning the administrative change. Following the change, the resident doctors ended their agitation.
That sequence is the central fact of the five-day episode:
September 22 - Rajnaresh Yadav dies.
September 23 - Resident doctors begin an indefinite strike and demand accountability.
September 24 - Elective OT and routine OPD services are suspended; a detailed set of institutional demands is placed before the administration.
September 25 - The Director's resignation remains a principal demand as the protest continues and services are affected.
September 26 - Doctors demonstrate outside the Director's residence through the night; government-level intervention takes place.
September 27 - The Director is removed from AIIMS Jodhpur, another AIIMS director is given charge, and the resident doctors end the agitation.
The language of the residents' demands reveals that their protest was considerably broader than one administrative appointment.
They were asking for a system in which duty hours would be regulated; residents would receive adequate rest; staffing would correspond to workload; OPD and OT schedules would be reviewed; leave would be transparent; resident safety would be periodically assessed; student welfare would have institutional representation; and residents and students would have recognised channels for communicating with the administration.
The demand for recognition of a Resident Doctors' Association and student representation was particularly significant.
For a medical institution in which residents constitute a critical part of the clinical workforce, the dispute raised a basic institutional question: how are residents supposed to raise concerns when the concerns themselves involve the people and systems controlling their work?
The protest's written demands attempted to answer that question through formal representation and defined administrative mechanisms.
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