MH Akshay, who is the Superintendent of Police for Chikkamagaluru, told NDTV that Dr Deepak was assaulted on Monday in the district’s Tarikere town.
Visuals showed the injured doctor after he was assaulted by four people.
Bengaluru:
After a 50-year-old doctor was assaulted earlier this week in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district allegedly over the death of a six-year-old patient, four people have been arrested and charged with attempt to murder, police have said.
MH Akshay, who is the Superintendent of Police for Chikkamagaluru, told NDTV that Dr Deepak was assaulted on Monday in the district’s Tarikere town. A video shows the injured doctor after the assault.
“Four people from the same taluka were arrester arrested within 18 hours of the crime taking place. Dr Deepak was treating a 6-year-old child, Bhuvan, for dengue. After the child developed complications, he was shifted to Shivamogga where he later died. Of the four arrested, one is a family member of the child, and the rest are friends,” he said
The doctor is currently receiving treatment in a hospital in Shivamogga, about 300 km from state capital Bengaluru.
Resident doctors in Karnataka have written to the Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa regarding the setting up of a legal cell to deal with such attacks.
“Doctors across Karnataka are putting their best to bring out best health care facility possible. However it is sad to note that there are more than 12 case registered incidents of assault on healthcare workers in the past 8 to 10 months while the unnoticed, unregistered assaults and also incidents of verbal abuse threats and hampering the duties to be discharged by the duty doctors can amount to hundreds,” reads the letter.
In another similar incident, a doctor at a coronavirus facility in Assam’s Hojai, around 140 km from Guwahati, was on Tuesday mercilessly punched, kicked, and pounded with metal trash cans and bricks, by the relatives of a Covid patient who had died.
Twenty-four people have been arrested in the case.