AMU doctors assaulted by suspected Covid patient's relatives

AGRA: Attendants of a 55-year-old Covid suspect patient, who was admitted at AMU’s medical college casualty on Monday with a complaint of respiratory distress, allegedly manhandled and assaulted doctors and staff after they were informed of non-availability of a ventilator at trauma ICU in the hospital. Later, the patient Haseena Bano died in the hospital.
An FIR was registered and all the four relatives of the deceased, who allegedly manhandled the doctors and staff, were arrested by the police late night.
According to Resident Doctors’ Association president, Hamza Malik, the patient was admitted at 1.30pm with a history of breathlessness and dry cough for the past 2-3 days. After a few hours, the patient’s oxygen level suddenly started dipping but as a ventilator was not available in the trauma ward that time, the relatives were informed and advised to shift the patient to some other hospital.
“As soon as we explained this to the patient’s attendants along with her grave prognosis, they started abusing us and got physically violent. They also gave us life threats and made an attempt to tear the PPE of one of the women doctors. One of the attendants tried to throw an oxygen cylinder over us with an intention to kill us but somehow we managed to save ourselves,” wrote the doctors in their complaint to the casualty medical officer (CMO) on duty.
Civil Lines circle officer Anil Samaniya told TOI that four persons were arrested under section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 353 (Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any person being a public servant in the execution of his duty as such public servant), 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC on the basis of a complaint filed by doctors. He said, two of them were bailed out for completing the funeral rituals on humanitarian grounds and others will be presented in the court today.