Doctor, 73, beaten to death in tea estate

Guwahati: In what has angered the doctors’ fraternity, a 73-year-old doctor was beaten to death by the workers of a tea estate in Upper Assam’s Jorhat district on Sunday.

The police said that the garden doctor Deben Dutta was assaulted by an angry mob of garden workers following the death of a garden worker Somra Manjhi who was being treated in tea garden hospital.

Source in the garden said that the workers at the Teok Tea Estate had beaten up Dr Dutta, a senior resident doctor, for allegedly being absent from duty and accused him for the death of a temporary worker.

Narrating the incident garden sources said that Sukra Majhi, the 33-year-old worker, was taken to the hospital, which is inside the tea estate, by her relatives. She was taken to the hospital in a critical condition on Saturday. But at that time, Dr Dutta was not present in the hospital and the pharmacist was also on leave.

The nurse on duty-administered saline but worker died, he added.  When Dr Dutta arrived at about 3:30 pm on Saturday, angry workers thrashed him and locked him in a room in the hospital. Dr Dutta had retired long ago and was serving on extension at the tea estate and is considered to be the senior-most doctor in Jorhat. Teok Tea Estate is a tea garden under the Amalgamated Plantations Pvt. Ltd. (APPL), an enterprise carved out of Tata Tea Limited.

Senior police officer said the magistrate and the police rescued the doctor from hospital. A magisterial probe has been ordered.

The incident came to light when a disturbing video showing the doctor being beaten up inside the hospital became viral on social media.