Residents seek arrest of VIMSAR PG students with 12-hour Burla bandh threat

Sambalpur: Residents of Burla have threatened to hold dawn-to-dusk bandh on Monday if the police fail to arrest those involved in the attack on Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VIMSAR) director Aswini Kumar Pujahari’s residence by Sunday evening.
“We will observe a bandh if the PG students involved in the attack are not arrested by 5pm today,” said a local resident.
While the incident took place on Friday night, locals gheraoed the police station and demonstrated in front of VIMSAR the following day demanding action against two students who had fled the institute.
The bandh has been called to express solidarity with Pujahari, who cracked a whip on doctors treating patients at private clinics during duty hours. The locals alleged that the attack was the fallout of the sting operations by the director to trap such erring doctors.
According to reports, two PG students allegedly manhandled the relative of a patient in the casualty ward when he threatened to inform the director of the institute about negligence in treating his kin. Following the incident, junior doctors demonstrated in front of the house of Pujahari and pelted stones, alleging that they were being targeted by the relatives of patients due to lack of adequate security on the hospital premises.
Pujahari lodged a complaint against the students in Burla police station on Saturday evening.
Meanwhile, police have sent the hard disk of the CCTV footage from the casualty ward that was found deleted to Chandigarh for retrieval.