A medical officer (MO) at civil hospital allegedly thrashed a correspondent from a vernacular daily and also pointed a pistol at him when the latter reportedly found him drunk on duty during late Sunday evening. Later, cops said, his colleagues also did not conduct test the doctor's blood to check for presence of alcohol.
Assailant was identified as Dr Arun Dalal and the reporter as Sanmeet Singh Thind, who had gone on an assignment to the hospital. Notably, the incident came within a week of health department ordering a probe into the conduct of Dr Dalal in an incident during which policemen had to wait for long to get three accident victims declared brought dead by him.
Police have started investigation after registering the case of assault and violation of Arms Act against him. Thind had lodged a complaint against him before Ambala's commissioner of police.
"We had gone to hospital to complete an assignment. On seeing me and my colleague, Dr Dalal initially misbehaved with us. As we objected, he started thrashing me and then took out his pistol while threatening me of dire consequences if I reported any incident related to the hospital," the reporter said.
Inspector Rajnish Kumar, SHO of Baldev Nagar police station, confirmed investigation had been started. "We reached the spot straight after the incident. We asked the hospital staff to take a blood sample of Dr Dalal as he seemed under the influence of alcohol. But the staff did not cooperate. We will also be looking into that," confirmed Rajnish.
Hundreds of journalists took out a protest demonstration against the conduct of the doctor. They also handed a memorandum regarding the incident to commissioner of police, Anant Kumar Dhull.