A 250-strong mob in the Indian state of Assam has brutally beaten and killed an elderly physician, prompting a medical union to call a strike. The doctor was accused of failing to save a tea worker as he was absent from hospital.

The Indian Medical Association, the largest body of physicians and medical staff in India, with over three million members, has called a strike for Tuesday after 75-year-old Deven Dutta, a practicing physician in the northeastern state of Assam, renowned for its tea production, was maimed by a 250-strong crowd and later died from his injuries.

Gruesome scenes played out at a hospital inside a sprawling tea estate on Saturday, shortly after a female worker was admitted to the medical facility. The 33-year-old was in critical condition and in need of urgent medical assistance. However, at the time, neither Dutta nor a pharmacist could be found, and the woman was left in the care of a nurse, who administered saline. This didn't save the ailing tea-estate employee, who died shortly afterwards.

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It’s unclear what prompted her demise or whether anything else could have been done to avert the grim outcome. However, the woman’s fellow workers blamed her death on the doctor, who failed to show up at the hospital before 3:30pm local time, more than three hours after the sick employee had been admitted.

When he did arrive, dozens of irate workers pummeled the 75-year-old and locked him in a closet in a hospital room, preventing him from receiving much-needed medical help himself.

Police were called to the scene, and made their way into the room, arresting 21 people. However, the doctor was in such bad condition by that point that he succumbed to his injuries hours later.

The incident drew outrage from the Indian medical community. The West Bengal Doctors Forum (WBDF) denounced the brutal act of revenge as a “violent murder,” while lamenting that such incidents have become a “way of life” for the country’s medics and that doctors are “not appreciated in India any longer.”

Decades of service, out-of-hour help, solicited advice to the patients he served were washed away, forgotten and violently trashed by a moment of service inadequacy.

Dutta was long past the age of retirement, but had not ceased working, the WBDF added, while prasing the doctor for his commitment to his own community.

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