Mumbai:
The protest by nearly 4,000 resident doctors across Maharashtra, who were on an indefinite strike after an assault on their colleague - allegedly by three policemen - was called off this evening after orders from the Bombay High Court. The court took the matter up suo-moto after the doctors went on strike.
"There is CCTV footage to show that the policemen assaulted the resident doctor. Apart from an FIR, no action has been taken so far," a member of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) had earlier told NDTV.
The three policemen who allegedly assaulted the doctor surrendered to the police. They were later released on bail.
The court has ordered the police to invoke the Maharashtra Medicare Service Persons and Medicare Service Institutions (Prevention of Violence and Damage of Property) Act, 2010, commonly referred to as the Doctor's Protection Act.
The court rapped the police for booking the accused under bailable sections and not invoking Doctors Protection Act. The court observed that from the video footage that is being shown, this is a fit case for invoking the act.
The Dean of Solapur Civil Hospital has also been asked to file an affidavit on the steps he took after the video footage came into the public domain. The matter will now be heard on January 8.
The strike was called after Dr Prashant Patil was allegedly thrashed by three local police personnel following an argument. The policemen allegedly asked Dr Patil to immediately attend to a pregnant woman who they had brought to the hospital, even as Dar Patil was attending to another patient. Medical Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) members said as Dr Patil was from a surgical ward, he requested them to visit the gynaecology ward for delivery. But the policemen then roughed him up for not listening to them.