By IANS
Lucknow : The death of two undertrials at the District Jail here has raised quite a storm with inmates sitting on a hunger strike Thursday while local residents joined hands and put up roadblocks to protest alleged ill treatment of undertrials forcing authorities to suspend the jail doctor.
Not satisfied with the suspension, protestors demanded filing of criminal charges against the doctor.
"The guilty doctor must be charged for culpable homicide," said a relative of 40-year-old undertrial Anjum who died Wednesday.
Jail inmates said Anjum, who was lodged in the jail some three months ago as an undertrial in a murder case, had been unwell for the past few days but no doctor had attended to him.
"Finding Anjum unconscious, we took him to jail doctor N. K. Gupta who said he was alive and referred him to the Balrampur hospital," said an inmate.
However, on reaching the hospital, Anjum was declared 'dead on arrival'.
As soon the news of his death spread in the jail, inmates started shouting slogans against the jail authorities and went on a hunger strike.
When jail superintendent R. C. Singh sought to pacify the agitated inmates, his attention was drawn to another undertrial Riyaz, who had not received any medical attention although he had been unwell for sometime.
Since the undertrials insisted that Riyaz be examined by some other doctor, the jail superintendent sent for a doctor from the city. However, by the time the doctor arrived, Riyaz died.
The infuriated inmates went on a rampage till District Magistrate Chandra Bhanu reached the scene and ordered the suspension of the jail doctor.