Boarders vacate the Medical College and Hospital main hostel on Friday. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

A violent turf war between rival student unions at Medical College and Hospital’s main hostel led the authorities to order the boarders out within two hours on Friday evening.

Angered by the eviction, junior doctors — 45 of them stay in that hostel — called an indefinite strike in all departments except emergency from Saturday. The only ones allowed to stay the night were the 15 students appearing for their final-year examinations. They will have to move out by 10am on Saturday.

Trouble began when 27 students, all SFI supporters, entered the main hostel in batches in the morning and demanded that they be given the seats that were “rightfully” theirs. The group claimed they had been denied entry into the hostel by members of the Medical College Democratic Students’ Association for over two years.

The argument turned into a scuffle around 10.30am, when most of the actual boarders were in the hospital wards. News of the skirmish spread within seconds and students as well as outsiders joined in the fight with iron rods and bricks.

“Bricks were flying around inside and outside the hostel,” Ujjal Chowdhury, a final-year MBBS student, said.

A team from Bowbazar police station restored normality around 12.30pm, but there was a second outbreak of violence two hours later in the college canteen. Three members of the other union were allegedly beaten up by SFI supporters, leading to a free-for-all.

“The SFI supporters brought more than 100 outsiders onto the campus to attack us. Some of them were students from other medical colleges,” fourth-year student Ratul Banerjee, a member of the other union, said.

Leaders of the SFI contested the allegation. “Supporters of the other union beat up 27 legal boarders and chased them out. When we went there for talks, they attacked us too,” Bibhas Halder, a member of the SFI’s district committee, said.

Principal Indrajit Roy declined comment on whether there was a dispute about who were the “legal” boarders. He only said that violence forced the management to clear out the main hostel.

“We have also sent a report to the state health department,” medical superintendent Anup Roy said.