Kolkata, March 22 2009
The death of a IIT-Kharagpur student, allegedly due to medical negligence, triggered tension with students damaging the director's bungalow and vehicles parked outside, the police said.
In the evening, director Damodar Acharya in presence of the agitating students wrote a letter offering to resign.
Students alleged that Rohit Kumar, a third year electronic engineering student, was admitted to the B.C. Roy Hospital within the IIT premises after he felt uneasy in the morning.
The student was discharged after medication, but his condition deteriorated as he was returning to his hostel.
On being again taken to the hospital, the doctors allegedly kept him waiting for two hours, before diagnosing his condition as epilepsy and sent him to Kolkata for admission to a hospital here.
But as his condition worsened on the way, he was taken by his friends to the Midnapore district General hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.
Enraged students surrounded the director for over six hours and ransacked his residence, protesting what they alleged the lack of facilities at the hospital and medical negligence in treating Kumar, who hailed from Darbhanga in Bihar.
However, the authorities ruled out medical negligence and claimed that the student had a history of epilepsy and was sent to a hospital in Kolkata but died on the way.
