A young doctor in Kerala was stabbed to death in a hospital early on Wednesday with scissors by an alleged alcoholic and drug addict when she was dressing a wound he had suffered in an assault.

After the death of house surgeon Vandana Das, 23, doctors across Kerala went on a 24-hour strike to protest “repeated attacks on medical personnel”.

The accused, school teacher Sandeep, 42, allegedly stabbed Vandana six times on her neck and chest after having attacked an accompanying policeman and home guard with a pair of scissors he had picked up from a tray at the Kottarakkara Taluk Hospital in Kollam around 4.30am.

Vandana was declared dead at KIMS Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, a private multi-speciality facility. Sandeep has been arrested and booked for murder.

Additional director-general of police M.R. Ajith Kumar told reporters that the police in Kottarakkara had taken Sandeep to the hospital as a complainant since he had dialled the 112 emergency number twice in the early hours of Wednesday complaining that he had been attacked.

“We received a call at 1am saying that he was being attacked. The matter was passed on to the local police station, which in turn alerted the night patrol. But the night patrol team found the mobile number from which he had made the call switched off. The emergency number received another call from a different number by the same person at 3.30am. This time the night patrol managed to speak to him and located him,” Kumar said.

“When the patrol reached him, he was found holding a stick and standing about 500 metres from his home,” the officer said, adding that Sandeep had a leg injury.

“The police took him to the taluk hospital. The doctor who examined him sent him to the procedure room for the wound to be dressed. He was accompanied by a relative, a neighbour and policemen. He suddenly turned violent, sprang from the bed and kicked his relative, grabbed a pair of scissors from the tray and stabbed a home guard and a policeman,” Kumar said.

“While the other doctors and medical staff quickly locked themselves up in another room, the house surgeon somehow got isolated in the same room where Sandeep was. He then turned against the house surgeon and stabbed her multiple times,” Kumar said.

The incident sent shockwaves across the state with doctors immediately going on a flash strike protesting "official apathy" towards the security of medical professionals. They resolved to attend only emergency cases and the ICUs during the strike period that will continue till 8am on Thursday.