The private practice by doctors in Kashmir is continuing without any check. Doctors have done a commendable job in Kashmir due to overall security situation by treating hundreds of those injured in protests. They are the real heroes who should have been feted for their exemplary services; they braved all odds to reach hospitals even as many of them faced the wrath of force personnel. Restrictions and curfew didn’t deter them from reaching hospitals. But the patient-doctor fracas in the hospitals has been a routine in normal days. Medics have gone on strike against vandalism by attendants of patients who have often been charging them of indulging in private practice. It has often been reported that junior doctors are taxed with the responsibility of critical care treatments at the hospitals here, while a strange precedent of doctors remaining available only on phone calls to the junior staff remains in vogue. Senior doctors often indulge in private practice and count the wads of money and the index of their professional reputation is often being decided on the queues that they draw at private clinics. It has become a mafia and doctors even route their patients to private diagnostic centers and prescribe the medicines for which they have often been taking commissions, which come both as expensive gifts or even trips to conferences abroad.  Any doctor who turns out to be a whistle blower becomes a pariah. Under these circumstances there is no scope for developing a patient-doctor emotional bond, and there is no remorse expressed over the continuing deaths in the hospitals. Hospitals have turned into centers that keep the record of deaths, but fail to fix any responsibility over growing death rate. Hospitals have turned in morgues as government has shied away from taking any punitive steps to check the private practice. It is the lack of coherent policy and brazen promotion of nepotism that while all other employees are prohibited from carrying out any private job after the office hours, doctors are allowed to indulge in the private practice. The effect of private practice has deteriorated the quality of treatment at government hospitals, while private hospitals have only mushroomed. It is ironical that doctors even notify their dates by which they remain available at big hospitals and government chooses to ignore this brazen advertisement of illegal practice. When a known doctors’ body has been vocal on stopping private practice, prudence demands that the new administration end the slumber to ban the private practice.