Dimapur, May 27: Less than a week after a Congress leader was bludgeoned to death, Nagaland’s commercial hub quivered under the impact of a near-fatal daylight attack on a doctor attached to Dimapur civil hospital.

Dr Maongwati Aier was about to get into his car, parked in the hospital premises, when the assailant shot him three times and fled before bewildered bystanders could react. The doctor’s condition was stated to be stable when reports last came in.

Colleagues said he was to be shifted to the military hospital at the 3 Corps headquarters at Rangapahar, but the idea was aborted in view of his serious condition.

The injured doctor is the son of philanthropist businessman Yashitsungba and the state’s reigning billiards champion.

The Ao Senso Telongjem, Dimapur, and the Nagaland Medical Graduates’ Association demanded a speedy investigation into the incident.

As surgeons tried to remove the bullets from Maongwati’s body, hundreds of people thronged the civil hospital to enquire about his condition. Doctors said only one bullet, lodged in the shoulder, could be removed.

On May 21, unidentified assailants killed a senior Congress member, Thungo Konyak, and dumped the body at Seithiekima 'C' village, near Patkai College on the outskirts of the town.

Thungo, who was 45, had contested the Tobu seat in the 2003 Assembly poll. His murder rattled the Konyak community. Some said a faction of the NSCN was behind the incident.