Kolkata: A mob went on rampage, vandalising the police outpost and the emergency treatment room, besides damaging some vehicles, and destroying the CCTV cameras at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on Wednesday-Thursday midnight.
Around 15 Kolkata police personnel, including the Deputy Commissioner (North) and Officer-in-Charge of Maniktala police station, sustained injuries, official sources said on Thursday. Nine suspects were arrested,
Sources said the mob, armed with lathis and other missiles, vandalised government property and police outpost for about 40 minutes in the ground floor of the hospital in north Kolkata, where people from all walks of life were protesting against the alleged rape and murder of a woman post-graduate trainee medic and demanding justice atrocities on the women in society. The mob also ransacked the makeshift platform set up by the hospital’s junior doctors, who have been on an agitation mode since the brutal rape-murder of the woman medic.
Sources said the attackers damaged the police barrack, chamber of the OC, and server room of the CCTV cameras on the ground floor.
The agitating doctors alleged the emergency ward was also ransacked and valuable medicines were destroyed and stolen.
The miscreants even tried to enter the MRI room and destroy it. The doctors were terrified at the sudden attack and went into hiding within the building.
They then sought intervention of the police and administration.
Later, Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal lashed out at the media, alleging that what happened was the result of ‘wrong and malicious media campaign’.
Goyal said, “My DCP, who was protecting the boys, is unconscious and what has happened here is because of the wrong, malicious media campaign, which has been going in. What has the Kolkata Police not done (to solce the case)?”
Meanwhile, a report said the police has started a search operation to identify the attackers, who vandalised the hospital.
Incidentally, the attack on the hospital happened around the same time lakhs of women, as also thousands of men, had hit the streets across Bengal to take part in the Reclaim the Night movement in protest against the young doctor’s alleged rape and murder