Bokaro, Nov. 28: Four youths, one of them a relative of a director of Bokaro Steel Plant, severely assaulted a doctor at the general hospital here last night. The doctor?s ?fault?: asking the relative his identity for claiming free treatment.

Police sources said Gaurav Shekhar, the nephew of the Bokaro Steel director and a multinational executive working in Delhi, and three of his friends, among them a local politician Santosh Kumar Paswan, went to the Bokaro General Hospital around 11.45 pm yesterday for a check-up. Shekhar, 27, complained of acute pain in the right hand.

The doctor on duty, Dhanajay Rajak, asked Shekhar whether he had registered himself at the admission ward. Rajak added that if Shekhar was the relative of any Bokaro Steel Plant employee, for whom medical treatment is free, he should disclose his identity.

Hearing this, Shekhar?s friends lost their cool and started beating the doctor. They picked up the sphygmomanometer ? the instrument used to measure blood pressure ? kept nearby and struck Rajak on the head. The doctor fainted on the spot.

Hearing the noise, other doctors rushed to the rescue of Rajak. Seeing the doctor collapse and sensing trouble, the youths fled from the hospital in their Scorpio. The youths are missing but the vehicle has been seized.

The injured doctor was operated upon immediately and his head needed six stitches. Deputy superintendent of police Sandhya Rani said an FIR was lodged against the four youths, but only Shekhar and Paswan were named.