Five held for assaulting doctors at Mumbai hospital

Mumbai: Five persons were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the alleged assault on the resident doctors of King Edward Memorial (KEM) hospital where the medics are on a protest strike, police said here.

Around 15 relatives of a 73-year-old male patient who died in the hospital on Monday allegedly beat up five resident doctors who were on duty in the casualty and postmortem department at around 2300 hours when they insisted for a postmortem of the deceased, police said.

The five arrested persons are identified as Ganesh Aduvarekar, Rohan Meher, Satish Sandev, Amarnath Parekar and Yogesh Salaskar.

Police suspect that at least eight more persons are involved in the attack. "The investigation is still on," Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP Zone IV) S B Bhaviskar told reporters here.

Meanwhile, Dr Anil Dudbhate, general secretary of Maharashtra Association of resident doctors and also one of the doctors who was attacked, said the strike called by them since early this morning will continue till the hospital authorities take action against the municipal security guards who did not perform their duties in preventing the attack.

The dean of the hospital, Dr Sanjay Oak, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Deputy Commissioner Kishore Gajbiye and DCP Bhaviskar held a meeting for three hours with resident doctors and appealed them to resume duties as five persons were arrested in this connection.

The resident doctors said they will withdraw the strike only when they get satisfactory report on the action taken by the authorities about the security guards who were deployed there to prevent any such incidents.

Oak and Gajibe said they have appointed a two-member committee to inquire into the matter about the security personnel and it will submit the report by today evening. Then action will be taken by the municipal authorities, Oak said.

The 73-year-old patient, who was brought to the hospital at around 1730 hours (IST) on Monday in a serious condition, died after 20 minutes of admission in casualty ward.

Since post mortem was mandatory, the doctors told the relatives to prepare necessary papers for conducting post mortem.

However, the relatives came back around 2300 hours and said they did not want the post mortem to be done.

When the doctors insisted as it was mandatory the relatives got agitated and assaulted them, said doctors Anil Dudbhate, Ubed Sayyed, Sunil Kumar, Sudhir Jadav and Rahul Gupta, who were beaten up by the kin of the deceased.