• Tamanna Ruhi
Doctor at Basopatti Primary Health Centre in Madhubani, who along with her colleague Sheela Azad was manhandled by a patient's attendants

It was around 4.30pm on June 25. Dr Sheela Azad and I were the only doctors at the hospital. According to the duty roster, no male doctor was assigned work that day.

An accident case came to us and one of the two people brought to our health centre had died.

We asked his relatives to take the body to Sadar hospital for post-mortem.

The other person was badly injured and we immediately referred him to Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) because it has computer tomography (CT) scan facility, which could ascertain the level of head injury the person had suffered.

Soon after the referral formalities were over, we heard his attendants grumbling. We heard them asking why a doctor was not accompanying the patient in the ambulance when he is being shifted to the hospital in Darbhanga.

We even heard them say ' maro (thrash them)'.

The patient's attendants kept asking why the doctor had referred him elsewhere and was not treating him at the health centre itself.

Sensing that the attendants might attack us, Sheela asked me to lock up our duty room from inside.

I followed her orders but the attendants started hitting on the door harder.

Hearing the loud thumping as the attendants began hitting the door, we began sweating.

Sheela called up the station house officer of the nearest police station thrice but he did not take the calls. I found the deputy superintendent of police's number on her cellphone and she then called him. But he asked us to contact the SHO. When we told him that we were unable to contact him he said he would do the needful.

A few minutes later, the attendants broke the glass pane of the door and unbolted it. Around 15-20 people entered the room. They first targeted me. I tried to escape but someone pulled my hair from behind. Then, another person pulled my dupatta.

Sheela's condition was even worse. She was taken to a room where the attendants kept slapping and punching her for minutes.

During this time, I got help from a person who lives near the hospital. He helped me take shelter in his house. Some attendants followed me to the house but couldn't enter it. So, they kept hurling abuses at me and said they would not let me go.

The mother of the person in whose house I had taken shelter, screamed back at them saying she wouldn't let any person harm me. As she was a resident of the area, the attendants left.

By then Sheela had run away from the first room and locked herself inside another one. But the attendants succeeded in entering that room too. They again began beating her and her driver.

They left only after the driver pleaded with them to show mercy.

In my seven year's of working life, this was the most traumatic experience I had. I am getting goosebumps even as I narrate how incidents unfolded on June 25.