The state chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) wants the Grand Alliance government to ensure doctors' safety.
The association would, for now, wait and watch, allowing the new government to settle down first. A decision to this effect was taken at the meeting of IMA's Bihar chapter on Monday. The meeting had been convened in the wake of an incident in Patna where city doctor Sunil Kumar received a threatening letter, asking him to cough up Rs 2 crore or face consequences. Police investigations revealed a Bihta resident had written the letter posing as someone he wanted to settle scores with.
But doctors are unhappy at the way the police tried to downplay the incident. At Monday's meeting, they demanded a high-level probe. "What disturbed us was that a doctor was threatened and also the kind of details about him that were available with the person who wrote the letter. It shows a recce was done before the letter was sent. A high-level probe would unearth the whole truth," IMA's Bihar president Sachchidanand said after the meeting.
The state chapter of the IMA came armed with figures related to rise in attacks on doctors in various districts in the past three months. According to IMA data, at least seven incidents of extortion and assault on doctors have been reported since September. The IMA also presented a CCTV grab showing how criminals vandalised Patna doctor Sarfaraz Ahmed's clinic.
Bihar Health Services Association (BHSA) general secretary Ranjit Kumar asked the government to form a hospital protection force for the security of doctors and clinical establishments. Sunil Kumar, who received the extortion call, had lodged a complaint with Agamkuan police station on Saturday. Sunil, who runs his clinic on the Old Bypass Road near Kumhrar, received the letter by post on Friday. The letter, purportedly written by one Ashok Kumar Yadav, threatened him with dire consequences if he did not pay the money. Surprisingly, the sender had also pasted his photograph and mentioned two cellphone numbers.
Sunil immediately contacted then Patna senior superintendent of police ( SSP) Vikas Vaibhav, who provided him a security guard and ordered the Agamkuan police to initiate action against the alleged extortionist. Subsequently, a case was lodged against one Ashok Kumar Yadav, a resident of Anandpur village near Bihta in Patna rural.
During investigation, it came to the fore that the letter had been written by one Lalan Mohan Rai, a resident of Bihta, to frame Ashok. "He (Rai ) wanted to settle his personal score with Ashok," additional director-general (ADG), headquarters, Sunil Kumar said. Acting on the basis of information provided by Ashok, the driver of the commandant of the homeguards based at Bihta, Rai was arrested on Sunday.
Physician missing
A Supaul-based medical practitioner, M. Kumar, has gone missing from his Naya Tola residence in Supaul town on Monday. Police said Kumar's relative lodged an FIR with town police alleging that the doctor had been abducted. The police have detained the doctor's assistant, a child specialist, for interrogation. Kumar's family in Samastipur has not received any ransom call yet.
