A man who had allegedly taken money from the family of a cancer patient, with the false promise of delivering some medicines to the patient, was beaten to death with pipes and bamboo sticks early on Tuesday.
Three men, one of them a family member of the patient and another a caretaker of the night shelter at the government hospital, were arrested on murder charges.
The incident happened near the night shelter inside the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital (CMCH), where the patient was admitted before the hospital was turned into a Covid facility.
Robin Das, 40, was attacked with iron pipes and bamboo sticks lying at a construction site inside the hospital compound, a senior office of Bowbazar police station said.
Das was taken to the NRS Medical College and Hospital, where he was declared dead. He was not admitted to CMCH because it is a Covid hospital.
“We could gather information that the victim had apparently cheated a patient’s family earlier last week. One of them (a family member) spotted Das and confronted him. The caretaker has said Das had cheated him, too,” said an officer of Bowbazar police station.
Das had allegedly taken money from the family on several occasions to deliver medicines inside the ward, which he allegedly never did, the accused family member has told the police.
The two main accused, who allegedly led the attack, have been identified as Susanta Mandal, a family member, and caretaker Gopal Maity.
The third accused, police said, was neither related to the patient nor to the caretaker. Investigators said they were yet to find out his motive behind the attack.
There have been multiple incidents where ward boys, medical staff and touts pretending as medical staff have extorted money from patients’ families, making false promises that they would take care of the patient in the families’ absence or help deliver food and medicines supplied by the family. However, officers could not recall any incident in the recent past where a patient’s family member had taken on an alleged cheat.
Metro reported on Tuesday how a heart patient who fell off his bed at SSKM Hospital was allegedly left unattended in a pool of blood for more than an hour, forcing his son to rush from home and lift him back on the bed. The son had alleged that he had paid three people in the hospital — two ward boys and a woman attendant — but his father was left uncared for.