Jodhpur: After protesting for around 4 days over manhandling of three physicians by kin of a patient at a hospital here, resident doctors today called off their strike and resumed their duties.
Nearly 2500 resident doctors of Udaipur, Kota, Bikaner and Jaipur had gone on an indefinite strike on January 24 to press for their demand to book the accused under Doctors’ Protection Act.
The strike was called off in the afternoon, following arrest of one of the 4 accused, a DSP of Barmer, for beating 3 resident doctors.
On January 24, an elderly woman admitted in CCU ward of MG Hospital had passed away. Accusing doctors of being negligent in treatment, four persons went on beating the doctors including Rajat Gupta, Ravi Rana and Sandeep Dadheech.
One of the junior doctors had sustained serious injury below his left eye, but is well now, police said.
After the arrest of DSP Mukesh Chawda in the afternoon, the doctors took out a rally and held a meeting, where they decided to call off the strike and resume their duties from tonight.
Confirming the decision, the president of Jodhpur Resident Doctors’ Association Sukhdev Choudhary said that they are satisfied with the action taken by the police.
“We had given complaint against 4 persons and since the action against all of them has been taken with the suspension of one doctor and arrest of 3 others including the DSP, we have decided to call of our strike,” said Choudhary.
Earlier today, the protesting doctors took out a huge rally demanding arrest of the accused, starting from SN Medical College to the police commissioner’s office.
The accused have been identified as Mahendra Ratnani, a government doctor and 3 sons of the deceased woman including a DSP (Barmer police) Mukesh Chawda, Rajnesh Chawda and Amit Chawda.
The protesting doctors demanded immediate arrest of the accused and suspended work in all the associated hospitals of the SN Medical College on January 24.
Taking action followed by the complaint, the medical and health department suspended doctor Ratnani while the 3 brothers including the DSP were arrested by the police.
SHO (Sardarpura) Bhupendra Singh said that Amit had been arrested on the same day of the complaint while Mukesh was arrested on Friday night and his brother Rajneesh was arrested on Saturday morning.
All 3 have been sent to judicial custody.