Install Panic Buttons in Hospitals; Make Attack on doctors Non-bailable: Demand in Rajya Sabha

Mahatme demanded there should be fast track courts for trial of cases of attacks on doctors. Also, panic buttons should be installed in hospitals to alert authorities about any such incident immediately.

New Delhi: A BJP member in the Rajya Sabha recently demanded that attack on doctors by patients be made a non-bailable offence and that fast track courts be set up for the trial of such cases.

Raising the issue through a zero hour mention, Vikas Mahatme (BJP) said doctors in the Kolkata government hospital were recently attacked by relatives and friends of a patient.

Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that following the death of a 75-year-old patient at the institute, the patient’s family had attacked the treating doctors accusing them of medical negligence.

According to the eyewitnesses, the mob of around 150 persons arrived at the medical facility on bikes armed with bricks, sticks and glass shards and charged against the doctors and dragged the hapless junior doctors to the main gate and assaulted them heinously. Then the mob allegedly started raining bricks at the doctors.

Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu did not allow anything that TMC leader Sukhendu Sekhar Roy said to go on record.

Mahatme demanded there should be fast track courts for trial of cases of attacks on doctors. Also, panic buttons should be installed in hospitals to alert authorities about any such incident immediately.

Also, such offence should be made non-bailable, he said.

Read Also: NIMS Doctor attacked by Patient’s Relatives under alcohol influence; Doctors stage protest

Shanta Chhetri (TMC), through her zero hour mention, raised the issue of delay by the Centre in according ST status to 11 communities recommended by the West Bengal government.

These communities, she said, meet all the criteria including geographical isolation and extreme backwardness.

The West Bengal government had sent the proposal to the Centre in 2014 and there has been an inordinate delay in grant of status, she added.