It’s not crime to speak in Malayalam – say the two nurses of the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, who were asked to resign for speaking in their native language Malayalam. The two nurses have knocked the door of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Labour Ministry. The nurses say that they will take the matter to the Union Ministers A K Antony and Vayalar Ravi.

The president of the Malyalee Nurses Association and wife of former Union Minister S Krishna Kumar, Usha Krishna Kumar has said that “the hospital should not have such a clause”. She told that this was the second such incident reported from the hospital.

She said, “Yesterday, the authorities were not willing to listen to anything the nurses had to say. Today, after the matter has snowballed, they maintain that the nurses have not been terminated.”

Seeing the matter getting serious, the Apollo management stated that the nurses have not been terminated. In a press release, the hospital said, “The nurses are still with the hospital”. However, the Apollo spokesperson declined to comment on the manual issued to new employees, directing them not to speak in their native languages inside the hospital.

On Tuesday, the two nurses alleged that “the hospital has not informed us whether we have been terminated or not”. “Yesterday, they told us to get out and not come back,” said one of the nurses.