Police have arrested 21 people over the death of a doctor that happened on August 31 after he was attacked by a mob in the state of Assam, India.
The crowd of 250 beat the 73-year-old doctor, Deven Dutta, to death for allegedly being absent from duty and blamed him for the death of a temporary worker, according to a report by Indian broadcast channel NDTV.
The crowd consisted of workers from the Teok Tea Estate, where the victim worked, who thrashed Deven Dutta, a senior resident doctor at the estate hospital.
Sukra Majhi, the 33-year-old worker, was taken to the hospital which is inside the estate, by her relatives in a critical condition on Saturday afternoon.
Reportedly, the pharmacist was also on leave and the nurse present on duty administered saline but the worker died.
According to NDTV, Dutta arrived at about 3:30 pm, aggravated workers thrashed him and locked him in a room in the hospital.
Dutta had retired long ago and was serving an extension at the tea estate and is considered to be the senior-most doctor in the Jorhat region of Assam, where the incident took place.
Medical association on strike
Following the incident, the Indian Medical Association has called a strike, including withdrawal of emergency services, on Tuesday, September 3. The tea estate in Assam’s Jorhat, 300 kilometres away from Guwahati the largest city in the Indian state, has been locked down by the management over safety concerns.
The West Bengal Doctors’ Forum condemned the killing and said, as quoted by NDTV: “Dr Dutta had involved himself in the service of his community even after retirement. The people he served thanked him by murdering him in front of the police.
“It took paramilitary forces to evacuate an injured man... such is the strength of the mob in India. Such is the nature of gratitude and natural justice in India. Such is the state of security for medical practitioners in India. In glorious India, the mobs remain our future patients,” another statement by the forum stated.
The forum also added that doctors are “not appreciated in India any longer”.
Netizens condemn mob lynching in India
Social media users were angered by the news of Dutta’s death as pictures and videos of the incident circulated online. Many took the opportunity to condemn the “culture of mob lynching” in India that has seen a rise in the recent past.
Twitter user @shahalam13 wrote: “The culture of impunity and hence lynching is so infectious that not one community or one ethnic group shall remain unaffected in times to come. From a medical perspective, this is exactly how an epidemic grows and engulfs a cohort. #NewIndia.”
Shama Mohamed, dentist and member of Indian National Congress political party, @drshamamohd, took to Twitter and posted: “When minorities were lynched, the attacks were ignored. When Dalits were lynched, the attacks were dismissed. Now 250 people have lynched Deven Dutta, a doctor in Assam. India has to address this lynching epidemic that has spread like wildfire since 2014!”
Similarly, user @IamOnir tweeted: “How unkind we are becoming as a society. Mob lynching, hate and violence seems to becoming the norm and people accept it as normal. There is no fear of law.”
