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Four Assam doctors quit to protest Jorhat lynching

DIBRUGARH: The lynching of a 73-year-old doctor in an Assam tea estate last week prompted the medical officers of four gardens to quit on Tuesday, including one who had survived a similar attack in 2016.


Ravi Baruah, senior medical officer of Mohanbari Tea Estate in Dibrugarh district, said the brutal mob attack on Dr Deben Dutta at Jorhat's Teok Tea Estate on Saturday made him realise that no professional reward was worth working in an environment of fear.

He urged colleagues across the industry to do what he and three others - the medical officers of Kakojan Tea Estate, Mariani Bheleuguri Tea Estate and New Sonowal Tea Estate in Jorhat district - had done.

"Attacks on doctors have crossed all limits. The barbaric killing of Deben Dutta is beyond condemnation. I have resigned from my job, and I urge all medical officers working in tea estates to hand in their papers as a mark of protest. This is not the first instance of an attack on a tea garden doctor. We fear for our lives," he said.

Baruah recalled his brush with death three years ago when a mob of workers at Hazelbank Tea Estate in Dibrugarh surrounded him in circumstances similar to the one Dutta couldn't escape from. "A 100-strong mob was baying for my blood just because the garden's only ambulance had been sent to fetch another patient. The nurse on duty and I managed to save our lives by locking ourselves in the hospital. I am still haunted by that memory," he said.

Dutta was lynched after workers blamed him for the death of a seriously ill patient who had been brought to the garden hospital in Teok when he wasn't on duty. On Tuesday, non-emergency medical services were suspended at the Assam Medical College and Hospital in Dibrugarh in response to a 24-hour strike call. OPD services were also affected in the other five medical colleges, and civil and private hospitals across the state.

Amid the groundswell of outrage over Dutta's killing, a doctor was assaulted at Garmur Civil Hospital in Majuli on Tuesday for allegedly not attending to a patient. Two persons have been arrested for the assault.

In Teok, eight more suspects were picked up for Dutta's lynching, taking the number of arrests in the case so far to 30.

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