The murder spot

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 16: The murder of an orthopaedic surgeon in the foothills of Khandagiri here on Tuesday has unnerved the medical fraternity.

The murder of Atulya C. Meher comes close on the heels of the killing of a paediatrician in Sonepur on September 21.

Reacting to the murder, secretary of the Bhubaneswar branch of the Indian Medical Association, Saroj Kumar Sahu said that doctors were feeling threatened following the gruesome incident that took the life of Meher.

Sahu said cops investigating the crime had told mediapersons that the accused Sneha Swakyar Samal might have killed the doctor for prescribing costly tests.

He said it was ‘premature’ for the investigating agency to reveal such things to media at this juncture. Sahu said even in the case of murder of the paediatric specialist Durbadal Mishra, it was a mistake on the part of cops to assume that wrong treatment of the victim’s nephew had led to the incident. The child, he said, was suffering from a congenital heart disease.

Senior medicine specialist of Capital Hospital Nihar Ranjan Samal said: “In both the cases, the police have issued statements at a premature stage and the cost of medication cannot be the motive for the murders. There must be something more than what meets the eye.’’

Samal, who had worked with Mishra for charity in the past said: “A doctor has to rely on a number of tests to get a proper diagnosis. If I prescribe a test for malaria, then after two days for dengue and after a day for typhoid, perhaps the patient will suffer or may not even survive. Multiple biochemical investigations are now integrated in a single blood test for better diagnosis. At private hospitals, everyday thousands of tests are done on patients. Can one conclude that there would be murder plots against those doctors?’’

Paediatrician Arabinda Mohanty termed the two incidents “unfortunate and suspicious”.

“If the trend continues, then the doctors will be reluctant to treat critical patients at district headquarters hospitals across the state,” Mohanty said.

“It is high time that policy makers and intellectuals call for a total revamp in the curriculum of medical education so that subjects such as patient counselling, patient-doctors’ relationship and medical management are included for better handling of such situations,’’ he said.

Psychiatrist R.K. Das said: “In both the cases, the murderers were either criminals or mentally deranged.’’

Psychiatrist Surjeet Sahoo said: “People with mental disorder are not prone to doing crime like this. Rather people with criminal personality disorder are prone to commit such crime.’’

The police, however, are yet to believe that the medicine shop owner killed three persons for writing “expensive” tests for his five-year-old daughter.

“Though Samal’s behaviour was not normal, he has no psychiatric problem,” said police commissioner R.P. Sharma.