Newly appointed health, medical education and family welfare minister Banna Gupta on Friday met orthopaedic surgeon Dr Kailash Prasad, who was injured and looted near Barwaddah, around 5km from the district headquarters, on Wednesday night.

Dr Prasad, 69, and his wife, Sharda Devi, 65, were returning home from a wedding in Govindpur.

Gupta accompanied by Dhanbad civil surgeon Dr Gopal Das met Prasad around 7.15am at Prasad’s own hospital, Kailash Hospital at Bartand, where he is undergoing treatment for mandibular fracture. Later, Gupta called up Dhanbad senior superintendent of police (SSP) Kishore Kaushal and told the SSP to investigate the case and arrest the criminals as early as possible.

After the meeting, Gupta said: “The government has taken the attack on a reputable Dhanbad doctor very seriously. I visited Dhanbad on the instructions of chief minister Hemant Soren and assured all help to the victim.

“The modus operandi of the incident suggests some interstate gang was involved in it because such incidents of road robbery and attack by felling trees to stop vehicles were reported quite frequently in Lodhashuli in Jhargram area of Bengal,” said Gupta.

If such a gang was involved, how they arrived and stayed in Dhanbad needed to be investigated, Gupta added.

“Since Dhanbad is on the Bengal border, there is a possibility that such an interstate gang could have arrived and stayed here,” said Gupta, adding that the government had instructed the district police to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

Raj Sinha addresses the dharna at Randhir Verma Chowk

On Friday, Dhanbad BJP MLA Raj Sinha sat on a dharna at Randhir Verma Chowk to protest against what he called the “deteriorating” law-and-order situation in the district.

“The law-and-order situation of the district has reached its lowest ebb under the new government, as doctors are being attacked and traders are receiving extortion calls,” Sinha said. “The government led by chief minister Hemant Soren instead of giving a free hand to administrative officers and the police to investigate the cases is intervening to lift cases against those responsible for flouting rules.”

He was referring to the scrapping of sedition charges against 3,000 people who took out a march on January 7 in Dhanbad against the new citizenship matrix.