At least three departments spread across two buildings of the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital were vandalised by the mob that broke into the hospital early on Thursday, conversations with protesting doctors and former students of the college revealed.
Cardiac monitors, beds, refrigerators to store essential medicines, strips used in spot tests to diagnose heart attacks, lights and CCTV cameras — the list of items damaged is much longer than this.
The Emergency department was the worst affected. The ENT ward, the gynaecology department and the trauma building were also hit, said junior doctors.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday she was not sure whether the “infrastructure” that has been damaged can be rebuilt. Two floors (in the Emergency building) have been completely damaged, she said. Infrastructure, equipment and injections have been destroyed.
“Two floors have been completely vandalised. The entire infrastructure, equipment, saline and whatever else is required there has been damaged,” she said.
A junior doctor said the Emergency department on the ground floor of the building, the same building on whose third floor the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee was raped and murdered, was the worst affected. The crime scene is unaffected, college sources said.
“We suspect the mob also tried to enter the third floor where the crime was committed, but failed,” said an intern.
“The ground floor Emergency has been completely vandalised. There is almost nothing left to retrieve,” said a junior doctor.
Videos showing the mob using police’s steel barricades to hit the collapsible gate outside the Emergency have been circulating since early Thursday. Once they barged in, the mob smashed the doors, the beds, overturned fridges, threw away medical records and also broke the lights and CCTVs with sticks and steel rods they were carrying.
“This place is like a temple to us. This is where we work hard to save critical patients but nothing is left here anymore,” a junior doctor told a TV news channel standing outside the Emergency. “They have damaged the cardiac monitors and trop strips. This Emergency was built only one or two years back with advanced equipment. All of that has been vandalised,” said the doctor.
A cardiac monitor records the electrical activities of the heart, the heart rate and its rhythm. A T-strip is used to do spot tests to diagnose if someone has suffered a heart attack, said the cardiologist.
The attacks on the two buildings also suggest that the mob split into at least two groups once they were inside the hospital compound.
While the Emergency (ground floor) and ENT wards (second floor) are in the Emergency building, the gynaecology and obstetrics department is in a separate one. The two buildings are also in opposite directions. After entering the hospital through the main gate, one has to go left to reach the gynaecology department, while the Emergency building is on the right.
Some in the mob also managed to reach the boys’ hostel, in another corner of the campus, said one junior doctor. While the mob rampage was on, many students and junior doctors locked themselves inside the lecture theatre on the ground floor of the administrative building. They used heavy benches and tables as a layer of barricade after bolting the doors to the building — such was the fear among them.
The reception of the ENT ward has been damaged, said a teacher. The police outpost on the Emergency building’s ground floor was vandalised. The police barracks were also attacked and police uniforms torn and thrown away.
Mamata said on Thursday that those who carried out the vandalism did not seem to be those involved with the movement. “The vandalism was carried out by outsiders,” she said.
“We have large stocks of saline, medicines, oxygen, injections in these hospitals (like RG Kar). I heard that some families have said they want to take back their patients because they are not receiving any treatment here,” Mamata said on Thursday.
