Hundreds of post-graduate students and resident doctors belonging to the Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute have been staging a protest in front of the state-run Minto Ophthalmic Hospital asking for better security claiming that a doctor was assaulted on Friday afternoon.
Patients were being sent back from the Trauma Care unit of the hospital citing that no doctors were available on OPD rounds as they were staging a protest.
These doctors have said that a female PG student, who was doing rounds at Minto Opthalmic Hospital, was assaulted by a group of pro-Kannada activists when she did not respond to them in Kannada regarding certain patient concerns.
While a few PG students said that they would not cater to any Out Patient department services as a mark of protest, some others said that services would remain unaffected.
"Five female PGs were working at Minto yesterday. Even as we usually close around 1 pm, since it is around Diwali and we were keeping the OPD open for long. At around 3.30 pm, a group of people from a pro-Kannada organisation barged into the premises and started questioning doctors about a previous incident while their were attending to patients," said Dr Naveen, one of the PG students.
He claimed that the argument began over cataract surgeries that took place in July in which many lost sight and doctors attributed it to poor quality drugs.
"They came and asked a PG student about the incident and sought to know why compensation was not given. She is from Kerala and knows very little Kannada. Even as she was responding, she was pushed by a few members of the group and abused for not knowing the local language," Dr Naveen added.
He said that they would go on an indefinite protest if their demands to provide better security was not looked into. "The security guards appointed here are mostly senior citizens. They will not even be able to foil any attempts of assault on doctors. We want home guards to be appointed in place of them. There are no CCTV cameras in Minto either. We need them," he said.
Dr Sachin Karbe, another student, said that a police post had to be created inside the premises itself where police are available round the clock."
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