The Hindu : National : Action against medicos: inspector suspended

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 16, 2006

National

National

Action against medicos: inspector suspended

Staff Reporter

MUMBAI: Two days after the Mumbai police lathicharged medical students who were protesting against reservation in front of the Governor's residence in Mumbai, a senior police inspector has been suspended and the Crime Branch will conduct a departmental enquiry, confirmed DCP Pratap Dighawkar.

Hundreds of medical students and members of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) gathered at Azad Maidan on Monday to protest against the police brutality demanding a judicial probe and action against the Commissioner of Police.

Vishal Raj, a final year medical student of the G.S. Medical College, suffered a hairline fracture on his right leg. On Monday he joined the demonstration along with his other batch mates who were also injured.

When asked about the incident on Saturday, he said, "We were just sitting on the road in front of Governor's house and were quite away from the residence. We were raising slogans. The police came from behind, from the Malabar police station side with three or four police vans and started beating us without any negotiation or without any warning. After a point they were just hitting anyone and anywhere. Even girls were hit in front of me. They arrested several girls without having any woman constables with them. Even though some students wanted to go, they didn't let them go and beat them in a brutal way."

Students were admitted to the J.J. hospital, Nair Hospital and KEM hospital after the lathicharge and arrest. Several students such as Vishal Raj have fractured arms or legs and were seen with sticks and plastered hands displaying messages about the police action.

Amidst slogans, the students demanded a judicial probe and not just a departmental enquiry and even asked for action against the Commissioner of Police.

Stir spreading in Gujarat

Ahmedabad Special Correspondent reports:

The anti-reservation agitation by medical students spread to different parts of Gujarat on Monday with resident doctors and internees in several government hospitals in the State also joining the struggle. Medical students in Surat, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar and other medical colleges joined their Ahmedabad and Rajkot counterparts to boycott classes and take to the streets, burning effigies of Union Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh.

In Vadodara, junior doctors and internees have decided to handle only emergency cases and sit in dharna with the medical students while in Surat the students had a clash with relatives of some patients who were demanding immediate attention to their health problems.

In Jamnagar, the agitating students staged a rasta roko for sometime preventing vehicular traffic on the road and later held a shanti yagna for "better sense among politicians."

They, however, did not disrupt the internal examinations being held for first year students.

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