‘Made a Nuisance’: Cops Chain, Drag Vizag Doc Who Voiced PPE Issue

Telugu Desam Party politburo member Varla Ramaiah said that this was inhuman treatment meted out to a Dalit doctor.

Screen grab from a video of the doctor being heckled by cops.

(Photo: Twitter/ @s_bairva)

The Visakhapatham police on Saturday, 16 May, tied up the hands of a local doctor, and dragged him on the road for allegedly creating nuisance in an inebriated state, reported Hindustan Times. The cops then put him in an auto-rickshaw.

The doctor in question, Dr K Sudhakar, was bare-chested and the video of him being dragged by a police constable has gone viral on social media.

An anesthesiologist at Narsipatnam Government Hospital, Sudhakar was suspended earlier this month because he alleged that the government was not providing enough PPE kits and N95 masks to the doctors.

The police commissioner of Visakhapatnam RK Meena later made a statement that the constable who heckled Sudhakar was placed under suspension and an inquiry was underway. However, he alleged that Sudhakar was in a ‘drunken state’ and that he snatched a constable’s phone and threw it away.

‘Inhuman Treatment Because He Was a Dalit’

Telugu Desam Party politburo member Varla Ramaiah told Hindustan Times that “It was an inhuman treatment meted out to a Dalit doctor for questioning the inefficiency of the government. The police and the ruling party leaders are trying to project him as a mentally challenged person to defend their action.”

(With inputs from Hindustan Times)